Does Opacity Clip work with particles?

I picked up SF to work on a specific type of effect- I need the smoke effects in this game to dissolve, rather than fade away. To do this, I'm trying to use Opacity Clip, but I'm getting weird results. It seems to "eat away" at the texture just a little bit, but then will abruptly make the entire particle disappear at once- I can't seem to find the sweet spot where the particle breaks apart smoothly. I'm not trying to to use transparency- I want the particles to be opaque until they break apart completely.

Any ideas? Am I doing something horribly wrong?