High quality lighter/candle flame simulation?

Hi,

I am trying to create a realistic lighter/candle flame effect, and am not exactly sure where to start. I’ve seen a game called Metro: Last Light, which did that really well, and you can see the flame in action here.

I was thinking of creating a capsule-like object with a flame texture wrapped around it, and rigging it in the modeling software, which would allow me to “deform” the mesh at runtime. It seamed easy at first, but after a bit of thinking, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

How would I go about doing that? Is my rigged-flame-idea doable? Or are there better ways?

Thanks in advance!

I would say the best approach would be using a shader. Unfortunately I don’t know anything about the algorithm here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfm3Bzdmg0E#t=01m06s