This was the age old "Particle-Opacity" problem, I think, when I first started playing with iClone many years ago.  I never found a solution then but maybe there is one now?
I have positioned the Popcorn "smoke effect" directly in front of the avatar's face ( at some point I want him to blow a puff of smoke). No matter the camera angle it always looks like the smoke is coming from behind the avatar. For me it was the old "particle-opacity-issue".
I guess I can render an Alpha pass (.png sequence) of just the smoke and composite in post but still wondering if there is something I'm doing wrong and maybe there is a way to get the smoke "in front" of my avatar by adjusting a render/display setting?





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It might be the same source of the problem we had with FX intersection with objects having opacity less than 100, but it's a bit different.
For whatever reason FX which is close (a couple of inches) to any object, looses its Emit Brightness. This is regardless of the object opacity, scene lights or any other FX settings.
If you move the FX far enough from the object it would restore its original brightness being in front of it.
I did not find any solution to this behavior (other than boosting Emit Brightness, which results in overly bright FX outside of the intersected area at the viewport).
As you said, the best would be to render the FX separately and compose in NLE.

This must be an effect specific bug .
"Small Smoke" doesnt show this behave but i am not shure if this can be used for your purpose.

EDIT: I put a Note on the Tracker ,https://www.reallusion.com/FeedBackTracker/Issue/Several-Fx-Effects-not-rendering-properly-in-place



Edit 2:

One hour later on anew session this did not happen (Dry Ice and Cigarette Smoke) , wierd !

Thanks all for checking. Looks like it's just one of those things we have to deal with...as I say, I noticed this with the old Legacy particles years ago. Well, we got "Mirrors" so maybe there's still hope:P
What the hey, a little compositing never hurt anyone:D




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Did you try adjusting the Popcorn Particle's Soft Distance?  I changed the setting from default (1.00) to 0.00 and the smoke came into the foreground for me.

https://marketplace.reallusion.com/iclone/author/biggstrek

Did you try adjusting the Popcorn Particle's Soft DistanceSoft Distance?  I changed the setting from default (1.00) to 0.00 and the smoke came into the foreground for me.         

Great! I thought I did try it yesterday, but I guess I did not slide it all the way to 0 and quickly gave up :Whistling:

Here's a quick comparison picture for those that might also need to know.  The only difference between the two shots is the Soft Distance slider (1.00 on the left and 0.00 on the right).  Pretty much does the same with Legacy Particles, too.

https://marketplace.reallusion.com/iclone/author/biggstrek

 Well leave it to the "old-pro"... great suggestion Biggs!!!    But.... when I first tried that suggestion there was no difference.
I then noticed in your reference image that the "Emitter Resource List" was showing the "Emitter/Additive_32"  highlighted in the Particle-Type List.
On my computer the "Emitter/Additive_1" was highlighted ( and always had been). I clicked on " Emitter/Additive_32" to highlight it and then everything started worked!!!! I re-clicked to highlight  "Emitter/Additive_1" again and it still was working fine. 
So weird... but I've grown to accept that through the years...and now that I think about it I needed to have the correct "Emitter" map selected...duh!!!:crying:
Thanks for the advice! :D

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Back in my programmer days, I'd have said that sounds like an "uninitialized variable", but what do I know?

Very glad you got it to work, Mark.  :)

(From one "old pro" to another... lol)

https://marketplace.reallusion.com/iclone/author/biggstrek

Today i messed with a few other effects, it looks like Soft Distance must be always set to 0, otherwise the (example fog or fire)
can bee seen only behind a mesh. Makes absolutely sense to me. Now because there are only 2 values it doesnt matter
if its set to 0 or 1 by default really. We just have to know what the slider does.