Without using particles, you can sort of do the effect with BCC extruded TEXT (one of the Boris continuum plugins of BCC 3D objects). This was part of the Vegas 15 suite some time ago. Play with the setting shatter deformer, you can find YouTube on how to do this.
It's kind of involved affect. You can use either AE or HF. I would use HF because, at some point, it looks like it will integrate with Vegas. Here's a video showing how you can do it with a person. It would actually be easier to do with text because you don't need to green screen anything. Essentially, it is just a particle effect mixed in with an animated mask.