"I mean that when I added the smoke emitter, it made every single quad of the fire mesh darker, even those that were unobscured by quads from the smoke mesh."
Um... well that doesn't sound at all like what I just described.
Reboot your PC. Then look for bugs in your code. Ceating a second mesh and then changing it's properties should not affect the appearance of the fire mesh at all other than when it's being drawn on the screen on top of it.
If you post some simple code that demonstrates the problem, then maybe we can find the problem. Otherwise I don't think we can help you.
Um.... are you sure your smoke particle quads aren't overlapping the fire mesh at all? Have you tried toggling wireframe mode while this is going on?
Um... well that doesn't sound at all like what I just described.
Reboot your PC. Then look for bugs in your code. Ceating a second mesh and then changing it's properties should not affect the appearance of the fire mesh at all other than when it's being drawn on the screen on top of it.
If you post some simple code that demonstrates the problem, then maybe we can find the problem. Otherwise I don't think we can help you.
Um.... are you sure your smoke particle quads aren't overlapping the fire mesh at all? Have you tried toggling wireframe mode while this is going on?