Flame on!

 

Video showing what happens when the ball gets too close to the fire.  I also include a switch to turn the flame off.

Fire and smoke - Particle effects in ShiVa3D

 

Finally something flashy!  It is pretty easy to implement a particle effect in ShiVa3D, but you will want to spend some time tweaking the settings to get exact look you want.  I still don't feel that I got the fire exactly right, but I feel good about the smoke.  At first I didn't like that some of the fire particles lifted off the main body of the fire because it didn't look very realistic, but when I added the smoke, the fire particles now look like the light of the fire reflecting off the smoke.  I think it looks pretty cool.  Next I will add some sensors so that the ball catches on fire when it goes through, which will be very cool if it works out right!