Hi, i’ve been trying for ages to get this effect working without any success:
are there any tutorials or does anyone know how to achieve this using the blender smoke sim.
any help is greatly appreciated, a demo file would be amazing if someone has got it going.
thanks 
Yes, but that is just a big unrealistic ball of smoke, i was going for the effect of multiple clusters shooting out in a star like pattern, basically any ground based explosion or impact you have seen in the movies, instead of just one big fireblob
to do this, you’ll want to simulate what happens when a grenade explodes, which is that each piece of shrapnel has a trail of smoke.
to simulate this we’ll use a particle system that trails smoke.
first, create a slightly domed subdivided plane and give it a particle system that has a fast emission of particles and a short number of frames (could even be just one frame) over which they are emitted. Play with the number of particles, the shape of the plane, and the lifetime of the particles to get the effect you want. you’ll also probably want to play with drag on the particles to get a nice parabolic shape.
then add a smoke sim to that plane and on the domain object play with the temperature and density of the smoke to control how fast it rises. on the smoke setting for the plane, make sure you are using particles to generate the smoke and NOT the mesh and turn up the substeps to get smoother addition of smoke to the scene.
from there, it’s just a matter of tweaking to make the sim look the way you want it to and if you want the level of detail in the image you shared, you’ll have to use high res setting on the sim.
Oh come on…all explosions are unrealistic.
Especially the ones that try to be realistic.
Ok guys here is the final result i got, it works best once rendered out and speeded up by around x3.
basically i made the simulation and keyframed the size of the smoke particles (1.0 at frame 1, 0.2 at frame 20)
enjoy, thanks for the help
I downloaded your scene. Really good! Congrats. I give you a tip: don’t put more than 1 emitter in the same domain. Make differents scenes and then you combine them like layers in After Effects or other software. This is easier and increases the control you have.