have you seen this stuff? Its Blender as well.
Interesting subject and results you got there bmud…
Here is one fire example I got over year ago from some website offering blender example files (I don’t remember the site nor the author, sorry)… Maybe not as realistic as you are trying to get, but interesting to study. Click on picture to see the video (encoded with H.264 codec).
Here is the .blend file for this http://uploader.polorix.net//files/393/Misc/fireball.zip
Hello, my native language is Brazilian Portuguese. I’ll be glad to translate it. Just contact me as soon as it’s ready.
This is getting very interesting, looks almost like an alien flame.
@S-T-S: I’ve had that example file since it was published on BN. It’s been very useful in my methods for good fire. I might also need to revisit that guy who does all the ocean effects for proceedural texture animations. 
But yeah… Fluids act more like fire than particles do. But… particles die and can be controlled better and fluids can’t. I tried repeating my steps to make a new fire (as if I was following my own tutorial) and I came out with complete crap. I’m not sure what I did right the first time… Maybe tomorrow I’ll tackle it again.
Maybe you should check out a program called real flow, I think I read somewhere that it exports out with .objs. It also has some nice rigid body stuff/ fluids.
@Spenn13: I’ve been there and done that. Though I’m sure I could get a much better fire from realflow by using a shitton of static air and spewing out “hot air” and having them interact… and using the heat variable as something to control materials… and ohmygod that would look awesome BUT…
Realflow is expensive. You may as well say something like “Why don’t you make your fire effect in Maya?” Gee… because… I like Blender for no particular reason, and I enjoy a challenge. 
Hey bmud.
Saw this on the forums here and thought I’d sent it your way.
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=99190
I think he’s got a .blend posted so that you can pick it apart =P
prolly a totally different approach from your liquid fire but there’s always something to learn from other people :eyebrowlift: (i didn’t read too much to see what approach he used, I just looked at the product and kinda liked it lol)
I got SO CLOSE today… I figured out how to get motion blur back, but I’m having hell trying to separate the textured fire fluid and the non-textured fluid that emits radiosity light. I tried making a CTRL-D duplicate and typically blender crashes (i learned my lesson weeks ago. don’t worry) They still use the same mesh so I clicked the “make single user” button and it turned the field pinkish red like I’m not allowed to make a new mesh copy of a fluid… I’m going to try manually linking a new fluid to the same fluid files next… We’ll see how that goes. [edit]After trying it in a couple of ways, it seems that it does in fact work… but it’s a little weird and makes blender decide when it wants to crash (sooner rather than normal) So let’s see if I can get an image out of all this tinkering finally![/edit]
Well hot damn… I’m not sure why I couldn’t get motion blur in these images since I had successful tiny tests with the same fluid cache… But oh well - something to figure out tomorrow. Radiosity is working, the “heated air” effect looks pretty good, all of it looks even better with motion blur!!, I also managed to boil down the complexity so now it’s just two render layers! All that’s missing is some nice smoke (and the mysterious motion blur).
I would like to note at this time that I fully realise that the fire is becoming more and more messy looking, but that is because I only just recently found out that 80% of it was opaque black which was unfavourable. The next post should be near-perfect. Lastly, I’ve just sent a letter to Ton to ask if he would like this to be covered at the Blender Conference this year… what do you all think?
@STCninja: Thank you for the link. Particles when done right I think could make some really great fire - and the more I struggle with this fluid idea, the more I’m tempted to just take the particles path… Just let me dream a little longer… I’m sure the best effect will be a blend of the two - which I will definitely be doing.
This looks really promising from these images assuming you can get rid of all that black colored fire. I can’t wait to see it with smoke and motion blur. And, particles can only improve it too as it does look a bit chunky right now.
How does it look animation wise?
very nice fire and the heated air idea is awesome
Animation isn’t coming cheaply. I let it render all night long and I’m only up to frame 140 out of 250. Each frame is taking on average 2.5 minutes using both processors and keeping blender minimized. I could stop it at any time and resume it since the frames are being dumped as PNGs, but it’s not worth it to cut it off short because the black stuff isn’t as important as the texture speed which I havn’t seen for myself. Go back to page 1 and see the youtube video there. It should end up looking very similar.
Preemptive Warning: I’ll post the new video on Stage6 instead of youtube. Make sure you have the DivX Web Plugin installed.
Now then, I’m going to take this rendering time as an opportunity to play Odin Sphere which has been sitting on my shelf for weeks. Thank you all for the continued warm comments! Keep them coming and keep sending me useful links and references. 
It’s a real mind-twister, but I’m having fun.
the last shots are really nice, i like the way the transparent areas look like the wavy effect that you get of something hot, only sugestion i have, is perhaps use an irreguler shaped shpere or something instead of the cube you have, to give it a slightly smoother fall off.
peace
its looking really nice, cant wait to see the next few renders :D:D
as far as using both particles and fluids, isnt there a feature for making a fluid generate paricles for spray etc? would that work here?
also would using a particle system that has a plain white halo that goes into a displace node help to generate the ‘heat haze’ type effect help at all? i think theres something in a blenderart magazine about it.
keep it up, its looking really great
(@rwy^
Hm… Well it’s good that you said something. I don’t like all that transparency stuff. I liked the older fire’s look. It was a lot fuller. I am STILL looking for some help (a link to a tutorial) for my transmissivity settings. I feel like I’m just randomly moving the sliders and hoping it works.
Sorry chum, but I’m actually developing this fire technique for a film that I’ve been doing the post-production effects for over the past year. The shot involves a large rectangular form that burns away at its base. I’ll be sticking to my rectangles for now for that reason.
I’ve seen that option, but I’ve never tried it. Thanks for the tip. I don’t think I want to use it though because I’m going to have enough trouble deleting all the extra fluid that’s already there. I’d like to mix the fluid sim with Jahka’s particles since I know they’re going to give equally impressive results and I havn’t even tried them out yet.
yeah i think the movement and dynamics are there now 
i think its jst the materials that need more work…but definitely getting better
it looks kind of like the legend of zelda fire
Still looks strange but it’s getting better. Keep working!
thanks for the video, great host by the way thats a big resolution. But there is too much flickering in the fire and the light, also, maybe without SSS it would have rendered faster. (if that is SSS that is)