Skip to content

Pyro Quality and Viewport Preview

Control solver quality, output detail, GPU selection and the interactive volume preview.

Lists and Nodes

In Lists, use the Quality and Viewport tabs. In Nodes, insert Pyro Quality and Pyro Preview into the Domain-to-Dynamics chain. Pyro Quality reads the Solver mode from Pyro Domain and exposes the matching Dense or Sparse controls; Pyro Preview reads the active Fire and Color channels when presenting its display choices. Select the compute device in the shared scene settings. Omitting either optional stage uses the Domain's stored defaults.

Quality, Detail & Devices

The Quality tab contains detail and output processing, solver quality, advanced pressure controls, GPU selection, and timeout behavior. Most scenes should start with the presets and only use Advanced settings when needed.

Detail & Output

  • Upscale: adds extra smoke and flame detail for preview and VDB export without lowering the base Voxel Size.
  • Sharpen: sharpens smoke and flame edges after simulation. It also affects Fast GPU Volume directly without changing the base simulation fields.
  • Smooth Iterations: number of smoothing passes applied to exported volume data.
  • Smooth Mode: chooses the smoothing algorithm used for exported volume data.

Fast Dense Quality

  • Pressure Quality: Low, Medium, High, or Custom pressure solving for Fast Dense.
  • Pressure Iterations: the custom pressure iteration count used when Pressure Quality is Custom.
  • Motion Quality: controls how accurately smoke and fire move through the velocity field.

Sparse Advanced Quality

  • Pressure Solver: selects the pressure projection method. Multigrid is recommended for most scenes.
  • Pressure Strength: strength of the pressure correction.
  • Min Solver Steps: minimum simulation steps calculated per frame.
  • Max Solver Steps: maximum simulation steps per frame.
  • V-Cycles: number of multigrid cycles per step.
  • Pre-Smooth: smoothing iterations before each multigrid restriction step.
  • Post-Smooth: smoothing iterations after each multigrid prolongation step.
  • Coarse Smooth: smoothing iterations at the coarsest multigrid level.
  • Pressure Iterations: iteration count for the iterative pressure solver.

Compute Device and Timeout

  • Compute Device: selects the GPU used by Pro Particles and Pro Pyro in the current scene.
  • Refresh Devices: refreshes the list of available GPU adapters.
  • Timeout (seconds): how long Blender waits for a GPU response before treating the solver as stalled.

Viewport Preview

Select the preview mode in Core Settings, then use the Viewport tab for its detailed controls. Preview settings affect what you see while working. They do not replace a baked VDB or final material setup for production rendering.

  • Viewport: chooses Volume or Fast GPU Volume when available.
  • Volume: VDB volume display through a Blender Volume object.
  • Preview Channel: selects which channel the Volume preview displays.
  • Fast GPU Volume: direct GPU volume preview for interactive smoke and fire. Available with Metal on Apple Silicon macOS or Vulkan on Windows and Linux.
  • Debug View: replace normal smoke and fire colors with a blue-to-red view of Density, Temperature, Fuel, or Flame. The preview updates on the current frame without advancing the simulation. Fuel and Flame need Fire Channels enabled.
  • Range Max: in a debug view, choose the channel value shown as red.
  • Preview Resolution: viewport raymarch resolution for Fast GPU Volume.
  • Smoke Density: visual thickness of the GPU preview.
  • Render Step Size: larger values usually render faster but soften detail. Very long smoke regions may also appear softer so the entire region remains visible.
  • Anti-Banding: reduces visible banding in the GPU preview.
  • Opacity: overall opacity of the GPU preview.
  • Preview Light: enables simple directional lighting for the GPU volume preview.
  • Azimuth: horizontal direction of the preview light.
  • Elevation: vertical angle of the preview light.
  • Brightness: brightness of the preview light.
  • Fire Brightness: brightness of visible flame in the GPU preview. A value of 1.0 is the calibrated default.
  • Heat Tint: controls how quickly visible flame shifts from ember colors toward white-hot tones.
  • Flame Cutoff: removes weak flame values from Fast GPU Volume. The default is 1.0; raise it for cleaner, harder flame edges, or set it to 0 to preserve the full flame field.

Debug Visualization

Debug Visualization is available in the Viewport tab for Sparse Advanced simulations.

  • Show Grid: creates a wireframe view of active sparse cells.
  • Update: refreshes the debug grid.
  • Toggle: hides or shows the debug grid.
  • Remove: deletes the debug grid from the scene.
  • Auto Update Grid: refreshes the debug grid automatically on frame changes.