Back to smoke, one way is to have a irregular cone shaped mesh that turns and morphs slowly, it has a suitable smokey and partially transperant graphic. The example below shows a few frames of one such mesh, as it turns it looks like it is moving upward.
This particular one is way to high in polys(and frames) to be suitable for gaming but you can get an idea of how it works. A lower poly, skeletally animated version could work.
Next approach is probably only suitable for distant smoke effects, basically you could use a couple of animated panels that grow slowly in time. The panels would be timed differently and overlap. In the image you can see the idea using 2 panels, and they would animate (move and expand in some way). The texture is not representive of what you would use.
This has the advantage of being low poly and low number of bones.
Another way is like an animated flip book, this is example is from the Holly model from the Red Dwarf game (a sauer mod) The original animated the computer character head in a very simple way by moving the frames to the front of the rack. The example picture shows the same model with a very early attempt with an explosion.
This technique is probably more suitable for explosions.
So before I blunder around any further whether anyone out there has any good ideas, experience or any example models? Perhaps blender has an answer?
