Creating this progressing particle/volumetric effect

Hi everyone,

I saw this effect (the white smoke when the tank shoots) and I wanted to create something similar. Here the video:

For those who do not know you can have a look at every frame in Youtube with , and . (at least for me with my german keyboard)

How would you describe what is going on and how you would go about recreating this effect? Of course I see sparks, fire and smoke, but what I am most interested in is that the smoke is progressing/evolving but at the same time very detailed like a volume texture and seems to be lit very realistically as if it would be ray marched.

For any help I would be super thankful.

Marcus

Probably just a couple of 6D flipbooks

It’s also possible to raymarch a heightmap to get a realistic lighting response. Something Ryan Brucks wrote about on his blog. Though that doesn’t look like what is happening here.