I like what Ockham came up with. I'll want to play around with colors and transparencies, but he's come up with a really nice effect.

I had to do a search for PhilC's script and it seems to be a mesh "explosion" that pulls apart the components of a mesh assembly. Since I was looking for something to blow up spaceships, this might have some application combined with other effects.

http://www.philc.net/exploder.htm

Acrionix's 2D tutorial is another direction. That made me look for Photoshop tutorials and below are a few interesting ones.

http://www.webdesign.org/photoshop/special-effects/realistic-explosion.8664.html

http://www.beautifullife.info/web-design/25-best-space-scene-photoshop-tutorials/

http://wegraphics.net/blog/tutorials/create-a-dynamic-particle-explosion-in-photoshop/

http://www.lunacore.com/photoshop/tutorials/tut008.htm

www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1dAedHmsuk

http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/tutorials/?featureid=1740

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon