There is never smoke without flame and Blender provides the tools to magically ignite a smoke simulation to simulate fire. Fire like smoke is a difficult physical simulation in Blender and will require significant processing to bake the flames just as we experienced with the first recipe in this chapter. However, our task in this flame recipe is to understand the material and texture changes to produce bright self-illuminating flames that as they rise and cool, produce wispy smoke.
There are changes necessary to the smoke settings to create the flow of flame-like tendrils in our simulation. These will be covered but the main purpose of this recipe is to show how easy it is to create a realistic-looking flame that appears to be burning at its base and gradually cooling as its rises, eventually dissipating as a dirty smoke. We will use the renders from this recipe in later recipes to create a loopable flaming torch scene that renders incredibly...