Fire!.....he he....cool
 

I am posting this in the movie forum because it has to do with movie special effects.

I am about to start working on a few projects which will include CG fire. I would like to know what the best program is to do this with (ie. Maya, Lightwave, 3D Studio, etc.) The three aspects I will need it to do is "Shooting Fire", "Explosions", and "Setting Someone On Fire" I have no budget, nor any stuntmen, so I can't actually use fire in my projects, so I will need to do it with CG. Any info will be useful. Thanks.

I'd like to know this too. So far I've been able to create decent fire effects in post with Adobe After Effects, but for the movement you're talking about you might need more. Maya could work most definately but you're going to need to learn how to do volumetric gaseous entities or whatever and figure out the right animation manipulation. Sounds pretty tough on Maya, but that program could definately do it.