What's the best way to make a nuclear explosion?

[GoldStorm950]

I am working on making a animated nuclear explosion for a RTS game. I made nuclear missiles that fly across the map and when it hits I animate a nuclear explosion. I have tried using particles and this is how it turned out and is somewhat laggy.

I have also tried using parts but the particles look better tbh. I don’t think changing colors or materials will help it look better anyways.

Does anybody know a good way to make a nuclear explosion that looks good? I’m not asking anybody to do it for me, I am looking for a better method.

[FaultyScript]

With nuclear substances! Jk, I would watch a nuclear explosion in slow-motion then script an effect based off of that.

[Zabazz (Zabaz)]

I personally love the particles, but I understand the lag problem for it.

How far away / how small will the nuclear explosions be? If they are super far from the player, you could use the actual model, and make it fade in.

If that doesn’t work, you could possibly make a ray with a nuclear explosion picture, and make it always face the player.

By the way the model looks really good. Nice job.

[colbert2677 (Dreamseeker)]

If it’s for an RTS, you probably don’t need to make it too intensive. You can set up particles in a manner similar to the model-based explosion and work from there. Realistically a nuclear explosion wouldn’t have that many particles - it may last a while but it doesn’t quite look like a fire fountain.

Understandably, the current implementation looks as though it’d lag quite a bit. There’s a lot of particles going off while the emitter is enabled in concentrated areas. In some cases, if you have multiple nuclear explosions, you could hit the render cap completely and some nuclear explosions may not even show up.

[GoldStorm950]

Looks better and doesn’t lag anymore. I couldn’t get a screenshot on time of when it looks perfecto.