I've started to experiment with how we will make the explosions.

At the moment Im thinking like this.

I want to have an animated billboard (always facing camera) showing an explosion. Centre will be placed a bit over ground so it will be clipped if camera is going low but show the whole board if the camera is in topview (around 30% from the ground the explosion should be fully visible with no clip).

Behind the explosion on the ground there will be a nonanimated (nonanimated=not several frames but still will be animated with meshsizing and opacity). Both effects will have an additative colour (I dont know the specific terms for this :P) and alpha channels.

The picture below with show, in addition to this we will have debris flying in the air and particlesystems following them (fire and smoke) this is not shown in the picture.

Now to the question. Is there a good format for animating this with alphachannels intact or should best way to animate an explosion be to put them tiled up in a *.png file so you (Garritt) can pick each tile?

What kind of additive blendmodes can we use?

Is this a good way to make an explosion?

As soon as I get the answers to this I can put up some in the FlySpray