Author: VA
This is my first real attempt at making a rendered explosion effect in Blender. It looks okish, but the work required to improve it further is more than I've got time for at the moment.
Included in the zip is the source .blend file for anyone who's interested (it's basically 7 particle systems in the one object, each with their own material), and a testing TBM. The TBM will override all the games default ship explosion animations with this one so you can get an idea for what it looks like in-game. If you want to set it to just override one particular animation, open the TBM and remove the entries for the fireballs you don't want it to override.
The problem with it I see is that it's not quite as sharply contrasted nor as violent as the default exp04, exp05 and exp06 effects - so I think it can look a bit out of place when used in amongst them. Hopefully it will come in useful for someone somewhere though.
Download (2 MB)
Downloads on the old fsmods site: 967