I know sweet FA about Cycles, BSDF and all that jazz, so I'll take your word on those. :D

I'm focussed on Firefly (as per the topic title - although this is as good a place as any to get a Superfly candle flame shader working too).

I think getting that three Russian-doll-style ellipsoids effect working in Firefly is 95% of what I'm after. It did involve fine tuning of some parameters and I need to annotate the shader network screenshot before I inevitably forget. As I put the shader together I remember first plugging the output of the N node (default settings) directly into the PoserSurface AmbientColor and rendering my flame. Realizing I just needed the vertical component, adjusting accordingly, rerendering. Realizing I needed to add an offset, adding a Math_Functions Add and plugging that into PoserSurface AmbientColor, rendering again, adjusting, etc. The two Math Function Gains and the EdgeBlend Attenuation were trial and error.

Perhaps I should do Firefly/Superfly render comparisons with various node outputs plugged into PoserSurface AmbientColor to see if I can identify a single node that needs a Superfly-specific tweak ? Or maybe I should forget about Superfly and let those who are familiar with it take the reins ?

The big thing I notice from your last three renders is that two of them have an almost horizontal divide between the orange-yellow-white zones, and the other has the nested ellipsoids the wrong way round - joined at the top, white smallest, inside yellow, inside orange largest.

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The 3Dcheapskate* occasionally posts sensible stuff. Usually by accident.
And it usually uses Poser 11, with units set to inches. Except when it's using Poser 6 or PP2014, or when its units are set to PNU.

*also available in ShareCG, DAZ, and HiveWire3D flavours (the DeviantArt and CGBytes flavour have been discontinued).