How to recreate this blow effect

[Shimakaze]

I'm sorry to say this, but unless you've got room in your budget for Thinking Particles or something you're gonna have to do it the hard manual way. If you're having problems making reactor act like you want, may I suggest animating the largest pieces by hand? At least that way it'll break up the way you want.

What would the advantage of thinking particles be in a situation like this? is it able to break apart objects or is it just better and handling situations like this?

It has a very complex built in fractioning system and is built on a physics system which makes it a lot more flexible. Look at this video for shattering for instance http://www.cebas.de/products/images/thinking/trunk.mp4
Also there are a lot more options for deciding when different parts of objects should break off. Matterwaves let you decide by shining a light on the parts you want to shatter for instance.

[DaForce]

That does sound pretty damn cool actually!!

Thanks for the info.