Sometimes it’s helpful to see how to put the pieces together to create a final animation. If you would like to see how to make the movie above, you can follow the entire sequence by going through the modules below.

There are a number of refinements that could make this better, I would like to offset the small fish so they are not completely synchronized in their swimming animation. It is possible to use Xpresso to target individual Clones, so that would be a place to start searching online for suggestions. A quick search for “God Rays C4D” should show up a number of different ways to improve on my Visible Volumetric lights.

A few particle generators could also be used to either generate a trail of bubbles or just to create particulates in the water for more movement and realism. An infinite fill light from below could improve the rendering, especially when the fish are outside of the spotlights. Maybe even attach an Omni Light with Falloff to the camera to create a feeling of being in a submarine.

I did do a few things to improve this that I did not show, I added Hard Noise to the Volumetric light, setting it to a brightness of 70% and I keyframed the Specular light value to be lower when the fish are together. I also made sure the big fish did not start swimming until all the small fish were attached and added a Delay Effector to the Cloner.

Not all of the steps use the fish model, but you should be able to figure that part out if you follow the modules in this order:

Polygon Modeling
Joints
Cloner Object – Introduction
Cloner Object – Using Object Mode to animate
Target Effector
Optimizing Mograph Cloner for Display speed
Random Effector
Timeline
FCurve Offset to Delay Loop start
Specular and Diffuse Maps
Transparency Absorption
Refining Lights and Visible Volumetric settings