Best way to create "thruster beam" on spaceship using Cycles?

Support Particles and Physics Simulations
1

Hi! I’m working on a space scene animation to be rendered in Cycles and I want to implement some sort of “thruster beam” coming out of the spaceship’s thrusters, something similar to this:


The problem is, I don’t really know how I would approach this. A particle simulation? A model and some fancy compositing?

I’d like it to glow + bloom like the image and maybe have some lens flare effects too. Some hints would be great, a screenshot of compositor nodes and setup even better, an example .blend file would be best.

Thanks in advance!

2

Is there anything you really need Cycles for? You can do this with a few halo materials in BI.

3

Yes. I need to use Cycles, I’m afraid.

4

I would love to know this as well XD