So this is the concept art for one of the scenes in an upcoming 3d film I have a part in. Working on this scene, I need to create smoke for the cigarette. We agreed it shouldn't steal the attention away from the rest of the scene, so I tried to make something more subtle that doesn't kill the rendertime-budget.

So this smoke test was pretty simple! Putting 5 cones on top of each other, animating noise on each of them and applying a smoke texture (featuring falloff-opacity, gradiant-diffuse) Renders pretty fast, but looks pretty dumb when you connect it to a cigarette that is supposed to move around in the scene. Sorry, need to find something else.

Although I wanted the smoke to be less subtle, this is how it will turn out in the movie.
Using a super-spray particle system in 3ds MAX, linking it to the cigarette  making it excellent to animate around in the shot.
To avoid it going in a straight line, I added wind-modifier, and drag.
Finding the perfect amount of particles to use in the spray was important to determine the rendertime, since particles aren't known for their fast-rendering-time.

I have however found another way to decrease the rendertime in this scene, drastically!

I just spent the better part of a weekend playing through Heavy Rain for PS3, and though at times, the voice acting seems out of place, I felt that I have to praise Pascal Langdale for his performance in this scene. The amount of pain that he sends through my speakers got to every bone of my body and really made me feel i just cut of my own finger! I was sitting in my chair in shock of what I just made him do, and I regret doing it.
I'm sorry, Ethan...
Sorry I made you cut off your finger.

Watch the whole clip or simply jump to 05:45 to find out what I mean!