Better Smoke

[Legacy_Master Jax]

               Hey guys! I've been playing around with placeables, and noticed everything looks way sharper and has a higher poly-count, save for the smoke animation. As I looked closely, it seems as if it is all a cubed model. Anyway, I was wondering if you know of a better smoke effect or model or whatever, that looks more natural and fluid. Is it a particular thing attached to every placeable, or is it an individual model? Maybe I just need to change the texture it uses? I don't know! Hope someone may let me know if there si a file in the Vault or something that may improve how smoke in general looks. Thanks in advance!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               In tilesets I usually replace the Bioware smoke by DLA-style smoke. That smoke uses a mist texture instead of a smoke texture and is affected by wind.
I'm sure the same could be done with the smoke for placeables.
You have to include the fxpa_mist.tga texture with your placeables hak if you want those placeables to be useful  for people without expansions and/or the latest patch. It was added with the HotU expansion.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Master Jax]

               Oh! So IT IS a matter of texture, then! Thanks a lot for the tip, Zwerkules! I'm going to try it right away! I'll post back with the result, so as to let others know how it went!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               It's not just the texture. There are differences in the emitters and animations, too. DLA smoke is affected by wind and has an animation which changes the birthrate a couple of times while the Bioware smoke is not affected by wind and has the same birthrate (in most cases it is 20) all the time.

The texture alone will not make the smoke look much better. It is the changing birthrate and that the smoke is affected by wind that makes it look a lot more natural. You can also make whiter smoke or darker smoke by changing the emitter's start colour and end colour settings. Even red or green smoke is possible.