Research for Particle effect: Flamenado

Flamenado, a tornado made of lava and flames. I wanted to create this particle due to the need for a unique rigged particle to tie into my hell-themed map. It is a large spinning vortex of flame that once scripted and created properly, will project gpu particles, ribbons,and debris meshes to create a unique effect. I began my research with exploring real life phenomena. I explored several videos on tornado rotation as well as shape.

Fire Spout 

In rare occasions, there is a natural event called a fire spout that can be caused and created from the air temperature difference caused by natural wildfire. I have attached a couple videos of this phenomena:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGmLtdrsjGY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TakT2pEJOqo

I enjoyed the tornado-like qualities of the the spout as it moved through space. I soon began to research into the particle effects systems of unreal and stumbled across this particle emitter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LINt7wJQVHE

It does not have a tutorial however, but it showed the particle system i wanted to create was doable. I looked at several videos on Youtube in an attempt to try to find a tornado-like particle emitter and had no luck. The videos covered were often times meshes imported through maya with long-coded blueprints. Unfortunately, i was unable to find proper coding and began to experiment with unreal itself to create the desired effect.

Unreal

 In unreal, I began by creating a GPU Particle emitter. A tornado is a large collection of particles and this emitter was the only one that could generate the number of particles that I would need to create the wind-like vortex. I played with the emitter settings and created a vortex of gpu particles that were bounded and began from the top and spiraled downward, just like the beginning vortex effect of a tornado. My result is pictured below:

It was a happy accident, and i still am not one hundred percent sure how i created this particle, but it portrays the desired effect i am looking for.It is in the prototype phase currently, but it will also have small meshes that cycle along the same cylinder shape as the GPUs, helping to establish the particles have density and weight. It is still a vortex, and i plan on adding ribbons to create "windlike" distortions along the body of the tornado.