Hi everyone, I''m at the point in my game where I need to implement some cool looking explosions. I have gone into 3DSMAX and made some OK looking sprite explosions, but they don''t look good enough. Does anyone out there have any good ways of doing 3D explosions, or at least really good looking 2D explosions? Maybe something with procedural textures or something cool like that??

One way of making realistic explosions is with a particle engine that renders a bunch or particles flying out from the point of explosion and colored with reds and yellow (possibly flashing or whatever.)

There are numerous tutorials about how to make a particle engine. I would guess that there is one here on gamedev and I know for a fact that there are a couple over at gamasutra and there are loads more other places... just do a search

Hope that help

Check out the GPI project today!

You can make a good looking 2D explosion in photoshop by making a new image with a black background, and use a white airbrush set to dissolve and spray a circle, then gaussain blur it, and then image->adjust->variations and click red and yellow till it looks right..

For 3D explosions you could just use the 2D Texture on a billboarded 3D sprite..

or.. you could make a particle system out of multiple billboarded fire textures, that could look nice..