I have some volumetric smoke that is really great. It can be animated nicely, but when rendering in FF it TAKES FOREVER. I can't imagine how long an animation will take of 600 frames or more will take, gulp. Is there a way to create a smoke effect (engines of rocket during take off) that won't kill my CPU? I don't want to wait days for a render of 10 seconds of animation.

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY HOLIDAYS

You didn't qualify the question with any cost limitations, so I'd say yes there is. Spend $79 or so and get an alpha-mapped smoke movie or animation which you can use as a billboard in your scene.

I have one in mind but I believe we are not allowed to link to commercial sites.

So here are some clues:

There is a site with shutter and stock in the name. Once there search for "missile launch dynamic smoke".

Or directly search Google for "missile launch dynamic smoke footage".

Think the indie cinema guys have the right idea, use VFX to add these kind of effects, its too expensive to model in a render. There are various channels like Film Riot on youtube that cover techniques for adding VFX including alpha mapped smoke as per BBs post,

Thanks very much. I hand't thought of that. The clip is awesome. Now I just have to go down to the blood bank a few times and...

Thanks!

HI again. Just for grins I thought I would animate volumetric smoke without anything else in the image, and a blank background for an alpha channel. (almost sounds like I know what I'm talking about) Anyway, interesting thing, the smoke starts small of course (starting engine) and gets bigger vertically and horizontally. (blasting out of the engines). I'm putting it out as PS images 300dpi. Started out very fast, 8 frames in 1 minute. Then as the smoke gets bigger (makes sense) it's taking a lot longer. I'm on frame 72 of a 180 frame animation and it took 3 minutes on a I7 6core machine using FF. If it turns out okay, I'll see if I can post the finished PSD file (all in one) to the freebie section so people can play with the tint and color etc. Thanks again.

Nerd3d has a Fire and Smoke (sp) tool available that also might work. Think its $20.00 at HiveWire3d. Used about 4-5 different flames with smoke in one animation without noticeable slowdown.

Thank you. I'll take a look. The animation i made looked okay, just didn't make it correctly, but it's doable.

By the way bb, you could have used the link as it is in answer to a question and would help the OP. We have lightened up quite a bit on our linking restrictions.