[Slasher]

I've been trying various explosion generators and filter effects in GIMP trying to do explosions and muzzle flash effects.  What programs does everyone else use?

[Spoon]

Combustion

But only because I more or less learned the basics at school. There's pretty much no documentation or tutorials online to be found for this program and the interface is not really all that logical.
Adobe After Effects is probably the better choice for effects.

[Angelus]

My first explosion effect was made in Max + Aftereffects, though i'm interested in other tools.

[starwolf1991]

Believe it or not, most of my effects are created in Paint.Net. I do use Gimp time-to-time, but Paint.Net's simplicity and numbers of plugins make it my primary choice.

[mjn.mixael]

I use After Effects. What kind of effect are you trying to make? Catch me on IRC, I'll try to help you out.

[Shivan Hunter]

Any good free programs or should I "get" AE?

[JGZinv]

I picked up the Adobe Master Collection for Cs3 a while back, so I've got After Effects... I've not opened it up yet though
I'd be really interested in tutorials or learning materials that would aid in making things relevant to FSO projects...

[Retsof]

I know from experience that you can get some good effects with GIMP.  What are you trying to do?  I could give you a pointer or two.  Solid Noise, displacement maps, layer effects, and Curves are your best friends.

[Slasher]

At the moment I'm trying to make death explosions for ships and muzzle flash effects.  The latter is pretty straightforward but some advice would always be welcome.  Also I've noticed looking through the MediaVPs, though haven't confirmed through actual in-game inspection, that the beam warmups for FS2 ships are animated effects themselves.  Am I right about that, and if so, could someone explain what methods they used to produce them?

Thanks for the references to the programs above. 

[Quanto]

If you want to learn the basics of After Effects (I'm an AE user myself); Video Copilot is the way to go. He does awesome step by step tutorials for experienced users, and the basics as well. Seriously, try out the Basic Tutorials