In medical animation, we often show cells and other structures bursting and releasing their contents into the surrounding area. Simulating these effects has traditionally been extremely time consuming and has required plugins that can complicate the process. Cinema 4D version 2023 now includes a realtime fire simulator that does a fantastic job, but it’s not yet compatible with cloud rendering systems such as the one we use. Embergen, by JangaFx, simulates volumes in realtime, but you have to bake them to a .vdb stack to make them usable in Cinema 4D and they won’t interact with the scene, pushing other elements around. Xparticles is great, but the simulation process is agonizingly slow.

Not only that, but often medical animation students are limited to what software they can install in their department, so having a solution that works in every version of Cinema 4D after version 20 without any plugins is a must.

This tutorial demonstrates how to use a cloner, some spheres, and volume generators to get excellent goopy cell contents effects with minimal effort and no extra software.