Exploding wood

[csp]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sQnyrlX5vQ

this is making of video is from the Pirates of the Caribbean (DD) and in 0:53 you can see the effect that I'm interesting on. Wood explosion!

I know that I can take long shatter pieces to look like wood by scaling down the geometry before the shattering and reverse the scaling after and I can use magnet force to explode it.

Here is a test I did last summer on that http://vimeo.com/28620811

But in order to achieve a realistic look I need to use very high number of pieces and clustering and this makes DOP almost impossible to manipulate so many small details on every wood piece.

I would like to get ideas, opinions or advises how can achieve this effect in a real production. Do you thing I have to go with pops or dops. Do I have to do different layers of simulation, one for the big pieces, another for the small, at the top debris and dust or put all of them together for better interaction between them. How much can I cheat and how, I guess motion blur is gonna help me to hide some intersections but from the other hand there will not be much of motion blur as the explosion will be in slow motion.

Any idea, links, Siggraph papers, videos or example file will be much appreciated.

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[Tom]

Use instanced objects (small wood parts) on particles to add extra detail.