I was doing some flame tests with Houdini before I get some real footage with a mustang in the race track for the ghost rider project... so this is what I came up with, and I know the final comp doesn't look good because I just slapped the flame on top...

The effect I am trying to mimic is from Fellowship of The Ring. Specifically the smoke ship Gandalf character creates while smoking a pipe.

I am using Houdini to build the geometry for the effect, which was a challenge at the beginning since although I have been using Houdini over 7 months now I...