Final render, added the head of the comet careening out the other side of the explosion/some more realistic offshoots/smoke. ::Explaination:: I was sitting and thinking of how to make some decent explosions in bryce, seeing how it lacks a sufficient particle system or any form of generator. And I came up with this. Any C&C would be VERY much welcomed. Welp, after a couple test renders, I did a 2048 by 1512 render, then shrunk it to 1024 768 thus doubling the dpi. But anyway nothing was "added" to this image in postwork, all if it was originally bryce, all I did was add a little smudging, some blur...changed colors/hues/saturation.. But anyway, here's how this image was created. ::Tutorial:: Well, first the comet: Start off with a single metaball rather large, then do a ring with 10, multi replicate these out for as long as you want, just so far apart so that it looks like a cylander (almost) Then delete part of the ring, 3-5 and multireplicate more, delete some more and more untill it thins out to none. Then the fun starts. Hilight the beginning of your comet starting after the head and click the 3d randomization size/rotation/position and hilight the bottom section of your comet, just randomize it a little bit, one or two clicks. Move up your comet randomizing each section more than the last. You will get a nice looking tail as seen above. You then add some details by hand, IE in the pic above you see mini trails coming off of the head, these were just done by hand. You should do this than group it, Preferably do it in a vertical fashion for better texturing afterwards. PS: select the first ring of the metaballs and display each as a box... otherwise you will be choking on lag later on. Mine ended up at a few thousand metaballs. (this could also be used for an underwater torpedo with some nice bubble material) The small offshoots from the explosion were done much in the same fashion, except the metaballs were multireplicated on a curve to create the shooting effect. Now, the explosion: For this you will need the latice tool and one omni light. Click to make a lattice, you don't need extremly high resolution, but it depends on how much detail you want. Next select the spike tool, for making all those spikes, and change your paint brush to "paint effect" now, spray the spikes to your liking, putting more in the middle (a lot almost solid) and fading out towards the edge. once you are satisfied click ok. Now, squash your model down untill the "spikes" are cube like. Duplicate this and rotate it in all 3 directions + resize, rinse and repeat untill you have a nice sphere like shape of "particals". Apply different texture maps to these, rocks metals etc. For the center, make a lattice that has only the center spiked and use the same method. Add a very ambiant 'glowing' fire or llava like texture to these, I made my own but whatever you want to do, plasma fire, clay's fire, whatever. In the center of the explosion area put a single omni light, adjust the brightness to the size of your explosion and apply a nice fire gel map.