I love the particle system, but the renders are a lot better using the Iray plug in.
What do you use to add special effects to your animations if the particle add on isn't used?

Thanks!

You can try particle systems in NLE during post processing.
I am with HitFilm, which has particles and I used it once for Iray rendered video.
But it probably suits for "small"  things.

Or, depending on your scene, you may split-render in iClone and Iray and then assemble them in NLE as I have shown here:
https://forum.reallusion.com/FindPost484331.aspx

Thank you. It bothers me that they have Iray but it doesn't work with the particle system they created. Maybe it will someday, but it's like releasing Iray before it's ready to work with their own plugins.
Anyway, I do have hitfilm. As good at it as I am as Iclone, which is to say not very.
I'm going to do a comparison and see how it looks. So far Iray wins hands down, but it is rather time consuming to create an additional step or two for the same animation.
Many thanks.

Iray is not made by Reallusion but by Nvidia. So they cannot control what is compatible with Iray.
Basically, if you want to render particles and animations in one renderer that looks better than the internal iClone renderer, you will have to use an external application like Blender, Unreal Engine, Maya etc. But that also means that you have to recreate or modify the textures and materials to look good in these applications since they aren't completely compatible.
This means you would only use iClone to animate your characters and then export the animations and do the rest in other applications. There is no magic silver bullet. 

Unacceptable! ;) But I want a magic silver bullet. wahhhh