So here are two projects I did recently, the first was just a short intro video to be used on another project (mostly it was just an excuse to play with smoke simulation some more), and the second was a countdown timer for the start of a show.
Tutorial from later in the thread…
and I’ve also attached the .blend showing how to use this to drive a smoke simulation.
KeyedSmoke.blend (900 KB)
Very good. I’m curious on how you did them.
Nice job! The fire looked excellent and the timer was amusing. Looks like it would be quite some work. I just messed around with particle systems all day and it surprisingly took the entire day… then again it was my first adventure into them. I look forward to seeing updated uses of these effects.
I’m particularly impressed with the fire title clip. Any chance you could explain the technique further? The transitions between the smoke and fire effect moving to the letters is quite good. Perhaps you could post a blend file? Thanks!
I love the pixel cube clock! 
that’s a nice one. would love to see it as a tutorial.
Both of them!
Love it ! yeap ! a little info about your technique would be greatly appreciated !
Great idea! I would love to know how you did it!
The countdown clock is really great, like the others I would really like to know how you did that.
I like the clock. I am also curious about your tecnique.
One more interested in how you did it!
Looks really great, good job!
+1. Tutorials would be great!
nice work!
Thanks for the comments, I’d be happy to explain how I did this. It’ll probably take a few days before I’m able to post an explanation as my computer went belly up yesterday, but as soon as I get it up and running again I’ll record something for you all. Thanks again for the comments and the interest in this.
Chris
I can think of one way of doing the clock. First create a subdivided 2D plane with the outline of the number ‘1’. Create a shape modifier for the plane wiith the outlines of the other numerals. Make it it into a particle emitter with cubes as the emitted particles. key the morphs from one shape to the next at 24 frame intervals. For extra effect, resize the mesh between key frames so it sort of explodes.
Yes? No?
That could probably get you a similar effect, I’m not entirely sure the particle system would track properly with the mesh though, I’ve had limited luck with getting particles to track with geometry realtime like that.
Aha! It was just a guess. It seems to me there was a method using arrays but it’s been so long since I looked at arrays that I’ve forgotten how they work. Hopefully you will reveal the secret once we have exhausted the guessing game.
Haha, don’t you fret, I got my computer back up and running today and recorded a short tutorial on the subject. Check it out and all the mysteries will be revealed 
Also here’s a project file that shows this technique driving a smoke simulation. Make sure to turn the smoke resolution on the domain up if you actually want to see what this looks like with any sort of clarity. I had to simplify things to get it to fit inside the file size limit.
KeyedSmoke.blend (900 KB)
Thank you CMonson for sharing with us. May I say, on behalf of the community: you totally rule.
+1, you are totally great. 
thanks a lot for sharing!
