I recently posted a short video of this effect to a couple of Facebook groups and the next day woke up to a flood of messages from people asking how it was done, so I’ve decided to write this tutorial. Thanks, Kirill and 80lv for providing a platform in which I can share this information! Also, thanks to Noa Barlow for helping me push this effect to where it is now.

The effect got to where it is now through a lot of back and forth iterations between the blueprints, materials and particles and experimenting between them all, but hopefully, I’ll be able to explain this in an understandable linear fashion.