I ended up needing to do postwork to clean up the torch because I wasn't able to get a clean effect out of Vue. What I did is use four spheres. The first is at the base of the flame with a glowing red material. Two have Vue fire mats on them slightly stacked, and the last is just above those and has a smoke material. I put a point light in the middle of the lower flame sphere, and it is the only light for the pic (I deleted the sun). The first problem was that two fire spheres ended up with a distinct "halo" around them (because the point light is inside them?). The more I messed with the material settings, the worse it got, so in the end I had to blend it out. The second was that my smoke ended up very flatlooking..not many eddys or variations. Again the more I messed with it the worse it got, so I finally just painted over that area to improve its appearance. I'd greatly appreciate any comments on how I approached this...maybe spheres aren't the best way to do this kind of thing? Other than that, I cheated the background blur with postwork because I haven't figured out how to use the depth of field thing yet. ;)