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[TheBlackHole]

I'm wanting to create an effect where a jet of cosmic energy shoots from a wormhole into a planet, sending a shockwave across the surface that breaks the crust enough that it completely melts, then the entire planet explodes. I also want the jet to bounce off the planet like a jet of water or sand would do, then fade away after it gets too far away. I've attached a GIF animation to illustrate my idea.

[siragin]

yes this is possible, but it may require a bit of work since anim8or doesn't have any particles or physics.
You might want to look into terranim8or for the explosion effect with debrees. as far as the collision you will have to key that by hand.

[TheBlackHole]

I know Terranim8or can do explosions. I basically want the jet to spread from a cylinder to a cone once it hits the planet. It then needs to narrow in the opposite direction, folding in on itself just before the explosion. Anyway, for the explosion, I'm planning to do it all in Anim8or (with a special "bubble" type effect for an expanding cloud of debris and a fiery shockwave and fireball, once the shockwave hits the camera, I could then just add some effects in Movie Maker) and all I really need to know for this effect is how to do the jet. The wormhole in the center of the space station (don't ask) is already pretty render-intensive, so I need a way to do this without crashing Anim8or.

[hihosilver]

My idea would be to do multi-layered cylinders (slightly different sizes) with transparency maps.  As the jets shoot out, the transparency maps can change/rotate etc making it look like energy of some sort.  Or, you could simply make an emissive color for a single cylinder and use some kind of post production software to give it a glow (as you would do for a lightsaber.)
For the animation, use morph targets!

[DragonSlayer]

For the crust melting, you could use morphs to shrink the outer layer of crust, and grow the "melted" layer of crust underneath. The melted layer would poke up above without greatly changing the size of the planet, and if you had multiple morphs, you could make it progress from the attack point to the other side. Two textured spheres would probably do, (though I would probably geodesic globes).

[cooldude234]

For the Lazer blast (or whatever you said it was to be)

          Make it a flat plane with a emmisve and trans map

For the Earth blowing up (Ironicaly, I'm working on that right now for a intro video)

          Do what I'm doing, particle effects in anim8or and and lots of objects with trans and and other maps (like bump) to split the earth into multiple objects, making the planet ready to have one big massive headach!

[TheBlackHole]

I had already figured out how to do the planet's crust melting (it's not Earth.). I've known how to do the effect since I worked on an earlier project, Xprrrah System (don't ask) where a massive (Earth-sized) space station melted a planet. I had one object that was the planet and a second one where the planet was melted. I simply expanded the molten sphere. I later edited that out as I wanted to try it with Terragen, but still later (months) my computer crashed and I had to get my hard drive wiped and Windows installed again. In the process, I lost EVERYTHING.
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For the jet of energy, I wanted to show it from many angles and thus make it 3D. Anyway, for the explosion, I wanted to simply have it expand into a bright fireball, accompanied by sound effects, then have it shrink and emit a huge shockwave that hits the camera, then use WMM effects to fade to white and fade to the scene with a debris field replacing the planet. The problem I need a solution for is the jet fanning out after hitting the planet. All the other stuff I know how to do already.