using the smoke system in blender

the smoke system is easy enough to use once you know how it basically comes down to you needing two shapes; a domain shape to contain the smoke and an emmiter object such as a plane inside it. once you have these set each object to there respecive fields choose the settings you want for your smoke and hit "bake "

fire tutorial

this tutorial was very helpful in creaating the fire for our 3d scene;

http://blenderguru.com/wp-content/uploads/Exclusive/Creating_Realistic_Fire_in_Blender.pdf

it is an amazing tutorial that showa the best possible solution to the well known problem of fire making in blender

the erratic way

as we all know 2012 is bearing down upon us to bring its deadly results... oh well. of course the Aztecs, one of the oldest civilizations in history, were able to correctly estimate the end of the world to the day with pre-ancient technology (it seems impossible that they may have only run out of space to continue with their calendar or possibly couldn't be bothered