Mantra render of effect
This was the best render I was able to achieve with the built in Mantra renderer.
If I decreased the voxel size or upped the render quality it seemed to go beyond the capabilities of the machines available to the university. It would cause them to crash alot.
The next option was to try Arnold for Houdini for the renderer.
This did not go very well on the machines at the uni. After a great deal of effort from Anna the technician we were unable to get Arnold rendering on the university machines.
In the end I was able to get arnold working on my home machine. This is what arnold is able to produce when rendering pyro
As you can see it looks fantastic. Once Arnold for houdini is working on the university machines I will look into producing a better quality render.