If it were me...I would add a touch of colored texture to the greyscale pipe gradients...its too pure and clean
You are reading my mind....I'm thinking a grungy substyle. I love grunge.
As for animating steam...I made steam animate from one frame to the next by distorting it one frame at a time with the wave distortion effect in PS...by lightly distorting a steam layer,copy,distort,copy again etc... for each succesive frame while diminishing the opacity a little each time
Sounds do-able. I was thinking along the lines of 'pressurized' steam, that spews out at high speed. Your tip might work for that if I'm carefull.
Thanks for the tips, Brain!