Sorry, my post is not an answer. Posted more like state of buggy Particle System and Texture > Voxel Data in Blender 2.79b. Blender 2.83 doesnt have this texture type. 2.83 comes with a new object type - Volume, but that doesnt solve nothing in this case, but future is always bright :)
My goal was to ...
- use voxel data generate particle cloud from texture (01) or vertex weight (02)
- particles represent by metaballs
- animation export as Alembic or Wavefront, that converts metaballs (smoke) into Mesh Sequence
test 01 - Meshed from Texture
Blender 2.79 contains Texture type Voxel Data that use this kind of data as 3D texture. Blender Manual describes this quite straight forward. And it works for 8-bit RAW and Image Sequence file format (like CT scan or MRI).
That means - it is possible (with some headaches*) to generate mesh by particle system represented as metaball objects, like this ...
Troubles comes with voxel file format Smoke (that should be able to reuse data of existing Smoke Domain on another object) and Blender Voxel (that should use externally saved simulation bake) ...
... I could see material in Preview of Material and Texture Properties, but nothing was rendered.
Usage of these baked smoke simulations (externally) is buggy for years. Smoke doesn't appear in domain at all / or is shifted / or just a few frames of sim is visible. Not always, and that it makes more difficult to hunt issue. (One for all bug report here - as many of them were closed/archived.)
Anyway ... for your needs, when I assigned particle system directly to domain and Domain was set as Texture for particle density I was able to generate a particle cloud and to mesh one frame of smoke, but not entire animation. Probably for the reason mentioned above - bug. I'm not sure how that one frame is selected, but probably current frame setup when assigned? Cant confirm.
For those interested - in case smoke sim is done ...
- add Metaball object
- select Smoke Domain
- add Particle system - Emission>Start1 End1 / Source>Volume / Distribution>Grid / Velocity>zero / Texture>New (Cycles engine only)
- go to Particle Texture Properties - Type>Voxel Data / Voxel Data>Smoke / Influence>Density
- set render particles as Object>Mbals
- export (Mball) as Wavefront(.obj) or Alembic (.abc) that converts metaballs into Mesh Sequence animation
... another pain as hell is particle system refreshing https://developer.blender.org/T52160 . Even you have visible particle cloud, opening file again hides particles. Basicly should help to switch between Blender Internal and Cycles
test02 - Mesh from Dynamic Paint Weight
Dynamic Paint in video of Miikah can use a smoke sim as a "brush" to paint, so I wanted Weight paint into a dense grid by voxel data. Vertex Weight becomes Particle size solver. But ... I don't even thing this was implemented. (I could only approved dynamic paint vertex-weight can generate animated particle cloud, but not driven by smoke.)
Resume - faked Fluid Particles seems to be a way to go ... :(