This Xplode plugin is the greatest thing that happened to Cinema4d since MoDynamics.
I've spent hours with this toy and the results can be astonishing.

Follow up:

Well Xplode is really straight forward to use and that is a plus.
Start with a Cube, assign a texture to it. Go to the Plugin menu and chose Xplode.

In the Xplode interface you set the number of parts to 200 and click Preview.
As you can see this generates red "Ticks" (particles)
These particles will be the heart of the shatters.
Now click "Shatter" and boom the Cube is shattered.

You can chose in what to generate the parts, in a Null, a Connect object, a Fracture object or a Cloner. Personally I always want to put the shatters in a "Fracture" object so I can use MoDynamics later on.
Another setting in the plugin is the inner color or texture, drop any material in the "Inside mat." so that all the cuts get this material. (I noticed that some times Xplode does not take this material into account, just drop the material in the interface again and it will probably work this time)

So if you generated the parts in a Fracture object just add a Modynamic tag on it, create a floor (plane) and add the Modynamic to that too and hit Play. Boom the cube falls down and breaks in 200 pieces. That is fun, again and again and again!!

How to get some control over the distribution and kind of shatters.
Well we have seen that the red particles are generated randomly inside the cube.
Now just create another cube, much smaller than the first cube. Place the small cube in a corner of the first cube.
With the small cube selected click on Preview in the explode plugin. This will generate the red particles only in the small cube. Now select the larger cube and hit Shatter. Yeah, this creates smaller parts in the corner and larger parts further away. Like it is a point of impact shattering.

Another nice method is to use a plane to generate the particles. Take a plane click on preview in Xplode, then select the cube and hit Shatter. Wow weird french fries!

Btw: this is the method for shattering security glas. I'll do some practical examples once the plugin is updated.
Try to play around with the orientation of the plane, this is fun too.

If you want even more control you have to dig into TP. Because Xplode works with the Thinking Particles system there a a zillion things you can do.
In the next part I will show you two very simple setups that create super particles for shattering.