Spawn particle effects

Is there any way to spawn particle effects?
Like at an explosion, but without the sound and the actual explosion?

 

Admittedly my knowledge of Bukkit's inner workings is very limited, but I do not believe you can call an explosion effect without the sound. You can however call a small smoke effect, which is blown by wind in a direction.

 

Smoke effect should be fine for what I'm trying to do.
How do I invoke it?

 

I honestly have no clue. Like I said, I'm not too savvy with Bukkit - I just know the effect exists and can be used.

 

You can create blockbreaks, witch does that block break particle effects.

 

There are to kinds of smoke, the effect smoke without sound and the explosion smoke with sound.
It's something like

Code:

world.playEffect(location,Effect.SMOKE,data);

 

Works. Data is direction (31 is no direction) and you can supply an additional int value at the end for the render range.
The effect location seems to be limited block areas though. Hope I can fix that...

EDIT:
Making the effect location move fast and over huge areas causes it to look nice enough.

 

Yes it really works.
But what purpose of the "data" parameter? What does it affect?

 

It affects the direction.
for data values check mc.kev009.com/Protocol#Sound_effect_.280x3D.29