Another fun plug-in Ulead COOL 3D comes with is Explosion. This lets you take your text and blow it up, sending shrapnel flying in all 3 dimensions. The Explosion plug-in makes extensive use of key frames for controlling how and when characters in your text object explode, so check out the Key Frames tutorial for more on working with them.

To explode your text:

1. Create a new document with some text in it. NOTE: The Explode effect can be applied to the entire group of words (if they're separate text objects) or to individual words and letters, even.
   
   
2. In the Libraries list of the EasyPalette, select Object Effects: Explosion. The EasyPalette changes accordingly. Select a preset that closely matches what you had in mind, and double click it.
   
   
3. On the Attribute toolbar, select the type of Movement you want the explosion particles to use. This defines the general look of the explosion.
   
   
4. From the Collapse Type menu set from which point in the text characters you want the explosion to begin. For example, if you select Descending, then the explosive effect, when applied to individual characters, begins at the top and moves down through the character.
   
   NOTE: This is NOT the same as Movement type, which describes the general direction the particles fly once the character has finished exploding.
   
   
5. From the Action Sequence menu, define the direction from within the text object where you want the explosion to begin. For example, if you select Backward, then the explosion sequence begins at the end of the text object and moves toward the beginning.
   
   
6. Next, set the transition Level for the explosion. This defines how much of the text is affected throughout the course of the Explosion animation. A value of 100 explodes 100% of the text, for example, while a value of 25 explodes 25%.
   
   
7. In the Rotate entry box, set the angle of rotation that the individual particles use as an axis to spin about.
   
   
8. Finally, in the Variation attribute dialog box, enter a value. This describes the random distance from one another that the particles move about in. The higher the value means a wider range of distance available to the particles.

After you've created your Explosion effect, you can output the results as either a video file or an animated GIF file. Alternatively, you can use the Timeline Control to scroll to a frame you particularly like and output just that as an image file.