Creating a Nuclear Explosion using both After Effects and Trapcode Particular

I can recommand the actual USA test bombing footage, if you are aiming for a realistic blast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnrLY-phipw&list=PLvGO_dWo8VfcmG166wKRy5z-GlJ_OQND5&index=2

*Martin

You might want to ask Google. It gave me:
https://youtu.be/O1tN7PMmuJg

Yeah, it's not realistic. It's too close to the ground, there's too much "smoke" and several other things. It's the fancy movie/ game version of a nuclear explosion, not a "real" one. Anyway, I can't see how you expect someone to explain a plug-in that has 400+ controls and a custom editor to you on a forum. With all respect, that's simply impossible beyond "Create a radial emitter for the shockwave." and other simplistic stuff. You really have to study tutorials and play with the effect settings yourself, then piece it together from what you learned using multiple layers and particle systems as already mentioned. There's a boatload of tutes on all kinds of explosions in Particular, there's equally many that create dedicated nukes in Blender, Houdini or other 3D programs. Point in case: Even a tutorial not made specifically made for AE can teach you a lot on what emitter types to use, how to use force fields and fake collisions to sculpt your particle streams and so on. That and of course you can alway explore other venues like creating everything using conventional effects and painterly techniques like we used to do it when particle systems weren't even a given in 3D programs 25 years ago...

Mylenium

Not easily. Layers and layers of particles and complex setups in the particular editor. The video alone has around 12 distinct particle systems and it isn't even the most realistic nuclear explosion. anything from the initial pillar to the radial blasts to the debris being pushed around. I suggest you actually spend some time learning Particular and experimenting with settings. Unless you can find a long-winded tutorial already, this realyl comes down to your understanding of what each setting in the plug-in does and what effects it can produce. Certainly not something one could explain in a few lines on a forum.

Mylenium