Has anyone any ideas on how to do a animated space ship explosion i need a technique for exploding a 3ds model and for a expanding fireball, i can create this effect in 3D studio but then i dont have all my great textures

The best way I have found to animate fire is to first use metaballs ( if you have B5 ) they will help get rid of the round sphere look. Scale your meta balls to make the fire bigger or smaller. To move the fire around do it only in the DTE by changing the noise frequency and orientation ( direction ) by 1 or 2 digits per second. If your ship has many parts you can explode it apart by selecting the group then go to solo mode, then go to the mesh list and use the select all mesh command. Then use the Randomized tool ( have it set to 3D dispersal rotate ) And do 1 dispersal. So if the fire ball starts at keyframe10 and goes to 100. Set a keyframe for the dispersal to start at 10 and set another at 100 and do the randomized dispersal. The trick is getting the timing right. Playing the animation in wireframe will help get the timing decent. If you try setting many keyframes and doing multiple dispersals, you probably won't get the results your looking for. The objects will change directions each time you do a dispersal. Or you can move each part of the ship manually and set keyframes how ever you like. Here's a fire ball I did awhile back, it's a flash file and 1.7 mb so it may take awhile to load. I also faded the Diffused color channel to make it fade out. http://www.fortunecity.com/westwood/patchwork/112/fireball.html

Stephen Ray