Wanted to give minor encouragement if I could. I know this was almost a year ago so maybe the feeling has changed since then. But I feel the exact same way about all of this your post describes. I've lurked for a long time, never posted or watched or said anything to anyone on here for a literal decade. It's actually taking more effort/guts to hit that 'Post Comment' button right now than I expected.

Anyway, happened to spend last year forcefeeding myself everything I could on Blender to maybe make some of this niche size stuff which is how I ended up here. No rush to push anything out or make giant leaps forward but I found your Fracture/Universes file super interesting and inspiring. I was trying some things with shrinkwrapping a heavily subdivided plane or dynamic painting it that didn't turn out nearly as nicely as what you've made here. I especially like your smoke. Maybe that's easy stuff for you but when I was trying using standard fluid domains and following other tutorials it didn't turn out well. Fluid domains confuse me as does all of the geo node stuff even if there seems to be massive potential for adding that feel of weightiness to a scene using them. I wonder if some minor particles of asphalt chunks could be thrown from the point of impact, maybe a slider to indicate distance/speed at which they fly from that point. Suppose that's something that could be tacked on by anyone just using the "quick explode" and tweaking the hell out of it but I'm wondering if there was a way using geo nodes to make it cleaner. I have no idea.

It's all very daunting and super complicated and I'd rather focus my effort on modeling/animation. But your work is an incredible proof of concept and a fantastic basis to work from. So yeah, even in a small way you've made a big difference to me. So thanks for spending the time and most importantly thanks for sharing it.

If you ever want sound design/audio bits hmu. I don't know much about blender yet but I know how to make things -sound- big at least.