Hi everyone, here’s my work in progress of an explosion inside Unreal. It still feels ‘off’ to me but I’m struggling with how to push it further, any feedback would be greatly appreciated 
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I would add part of the aftermath smoke roll on the ground and some debris affected by the gravity. Right now, it feels like it’ going in the y direction only. Was it in your plan to create decals or other static debris to show the aftermath?
Do you have a concept or clear goals that you want to acheive? It would be easier for us to comment.
Thanks for sharing!
L-J
It looks like a simple scaling motion. I think it’s better to divide the smoke elements.
Explosion-driven strong smoke effect, side smoke, sand ect. Just like LJ said, add gravity to give them a different move. I expect to work better~
I think this core emitter has too long lifetime
Could you post your ref?
It currently looks like it’s happening on the moon, but if that’s a choice there’s no point in us feedbacking on it.
I agree with the others; assuming this isn’t in a zero-gravity, windless setting, you definitely need some of your elements to come back down to earth
Also, per L-J’s reply, context here is important. Ask yourself what is exploding, and where.
The what will determine, among other things, the force/scale/speed of the initial blast.
The where will determine exactly what is being kicked up in the aftermath of the initial detonation, and how it is affected by environment (gravity, wind etc.). Are we seeing smoke, dirt, or dust? Probably all three? How do these three elements differ? On that note, to keep things simple for now, I suggest only triggering one explosion, in one location.
I could point to a ton of real world and game references, but I’m going to be lazy and let you find some for yourself if you haven’t already done so. 
@LJ_FX My goal in creating the piece was to create a medium/small scale explosion without the use of any sims, I hadn’t thought about using any static debris for aftermath yet but it’s something that’d certainly help sell it.
@slowdive Ok, I’ll try breaking it down into more parts for better control over the motion
@electrovi4 I’ll have a look at that 
@Partikel Here are some of the references I’ve been using, now that I’ve slept and come back to look at them I realise I hadn’t been looking at them enough and more being going off what I thought it should look like. (Edit: videos aren’t giving preview windows, sorry they’re just links)
Battlefield 1 grenade:
http://www.youtubeonrepeat.com/watch/?v=9dUvAQ7HmDo&from=27&to=31
Grenade Field Explosion:
http://www.youtubeonrepeat.com/watch/?v=uYgvMTkSxzo&from=29&to=37
Live Grenade Training:
http://www.youtubeonrepeat.com/watch/?v=wfPP5Smif8U&from=43&to=54
@Snowy I’ll have another look at the gravity of everything and context of the individual parts of the explosion as well as the location it’s exploding in. I’ve linked a few references I’ve been using, don’t wanna dump too many and clog up the thread 
Thank you all for the feedback, once I’m back from university tonight I’ll upload my work again 
Right, then I’d say your biggest issue is that you’ve confused two elements of the explosion. You are trying to make it look like lingering smoke rising after the explosion, but you are using the directional elements of the initial blast to do so. Split them. All the directionality should be gone within a few frames. Add in a separate emitter that’s a soft, slow rising smoke that does that stuff instead.
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Ah right ok, I think i’ll get on with splitting up these elements and getting their timing/lifetime to be more in-line with the refrences, thanks for the help
Hey,
Good job so far, in the BF1 explosion (http://www.youtubeonrepeat.com/watch/?v=9dUvAQ7HmDo&from=27&to=316) I did what @Partikel said. The quick directional elements are only a few frames and stay quick and snappy, then I spawn a different emitter with the lingering smoke.
It’s usually really hard to make one emitter do both and much easier to split them up in to two emitters (or more) so you can tweak the behavior independently.
After you nailed that I would work a bit more on the shape (it looks a bit like an upside down T right now instead of a V shape), then add more depth to the explosion with more detail like derbies and so forth.
Good luck!