The shatter transition was also part of the older 3dLE pluginpac that he offered and that version should still work.

You might also look at the various NewBlue transitions - I know there's also a 3d blow apart transition.

Thanks. They're happy with the transition they have in their current video, which isn't realistic at all. Basically, the image breaks into large squares that rotate and fly in a seemingly random pattern toward the viewer. I'd like to give them something better, if possible, to "wow" them. If I can't find something realistic, I at least need to give them something that is as good as what they presently have. Sounds like I should look at NewBlue and see what's there.

you can always take a piece of glass, paint it a flat color (ie neon green), point a video camera @ it, hit record, SHATTER the glass & use that.

I should do something like that. That sounds pretty neat!

The NB stuff is also very graphic visually not very organic

What you can try if you have a video clip of an explosion to use as a displacement map

Track 1 your object…channel displacement map …parent
Track 2 video clip of explosion child
Track 3 video clip of explosion

Key out or mask the negative space in track 1 so you can see track 3 original explosion
The exploding gradients in the track 2 clip will displace the object
Pan and zoom for effect

Modern day explosive are so brisant (my word for the week) that you don't need an FX to make a realistic simulation. Targets are there in one frame and gone in the next. A client of ours tried using an EX1 at 60fps. The car bomb and the dummy suicide bomber just vanished between frames.
So just add some stock 'explosion' footage of flames and smoke to a cut of the object taken out of shot. You might like to add some falling debris a few seconds after the bang. One part of the car in the tests I saw did come back to earth, judging by how long it took it must have gone up a looong way.

Bob.

Wax can probably do what you want, and they have some explosion presets built in, if I remember correctly. I posted here:

Glass Shatter transition

how to get it to work in later versions of Vegas. Also that thread (started by someone else) may have a few hints that are relevant to your situation.

I've watched a lot of "Mythbusters" the past few months, and they are always blowing things up, but for real: no fX. What I note from those real explosions is that the real thing is much faster than the CGI versions. So, if you use Wax, you'll need to animate your keyframes really, really fast.

I appreciate all the suggestions. I got Wax to work. Wasn't easy, and it's real kludgy. The built-in shatter effect there is similar to what they already have (Wax has triangle fragments, they have squares). There is another effect that generates much smaller fragments, but I don't care much for that one either. The fragments are all black.

I did try the suggestion using masking with parent/child frames. I'm not sure exactly what I should have been getting, so I'm not sure if I was doing it right, but what I got was not what I wanted. At least I have a base that would probably be okay. That's more than I had this morning...

I was also able to get a copy of the Plug-in Pak mentioned in the related thread posted by John Meyer. While it doesn't have as much stuff in it, it sure works in Vegas better than does the Wax stuff. Thanks again.