Smashing objects

Just wondering if anyone knew a simple way to make objects smash into recognisable little peices when you destroy them, by recognisable i mean it looks like a peice of the whole rather than a standard wood fragment or something. At the moment i'm playing with the pinball movement for each pieces physics but i don't know how to get an object to appear as though it's broken apart without making the object count quite high. I did find a tutorial on another forum that sounded like it covered what i was after but it doesn't seem to be there when i click the link (It was something about shrapnel i think)anyway since the link didn't work i just thought i'd check here, any help is appreciated,thanks.

Maybe make a custom animation for your object. When you destroy it place the custom animation at the object's location?

Marv

I suppose i could create a custom animation, but then each time you destroyed that object it would repeat that same animation over again which could become quite boring if you are repeatly smashing items. Currently i'm using a method similar to what Chaos has used for particles in an example(It uses the pinball movement I think?) so that my peices fly in different directions every time and then fall back down to earth, the main problem i'm facing is that to get a chair to break apart into 6 flying bits it would require 6 different objects,and if i want multiple objects that break apart when they are destroyed (including some badguys) things could get complex.

If it helps The effect i'm after is similar to what happens in Castlevania POR when you smash a torch or clock.

You could generate a particle, but make it a recognisable piece. So I have some targets with 3 wooden legs and a round target bit. When broken, the round bit breaks into 3 parts, and the legs break into a few bits each. I then just make sure it creates the correct number of each, and fires them in a random direction.

It works quite well.