Greetings from Brazil…
So here I am trying to make decent shaded smoke, but still fighting with it. My settings are attached in here…
Question is: How to make decent white smoke, let me say, very dense and light gray with obvious shadows and some lighter white parts, like this image? http://www.orakonews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/white_smoke.jpg - I’m not interested in the smoke simulation itself (IMHO I got a good grasp of it), but only in the nodes settings.
Thanks in advance!
on your main 3D header, in the ‘object’ menu, there are some options for ‘quick effects’. one of them is ‘quick smoke’. add a cube and enable ‘quick smoke’. Then you can study the material settings.
I’d separate your density multipliers for absorption and scatter - rarely do you want them to be the same (or so high).
Instead of the Mix node - use the add node - it seems to work better with volumetrics.
Your anisotropic factor may also be causing a problem depending where your light source is. The higher the anisotropic factor - the more the light will be scattered forward. This has the effect of brightening the smoke if the lightsource is behind it - but if your light source is in from or to the side - the smoke will look darker as less light is being scattered towards the camera. I’d probably set this to zero for the moment.
You cold always throw an emission shader into the mix too - set at a low level with the density–>multiply going into the emission strength - it would allow you to add some brighness to the smoke without emitting too much light.
I feel like cheating, but emitter was the best solution for me so far, thanks to all!
The word, “cheat,” is quite honorable in these worlds. Otherwise known as: “meeting the deadline.”
There are lots of ways to do anything. Find the shortest and most-repeatable way to “good enough,” and “print it” and move on.
Wise words. 
