Breaking and shatering with nCloth

[VFXartist]

I, too, need Duncan's or someone's help. I'm shattering an object with nCloth but when you shatter something it seperates every face so you lose the objects thickness. If anyone knows a way around that I'd love to know. Thanks.

[eodmpink]

VFXartist:
It's very simple; just add an extrude node (or any other type) after you apply create nCloth.

Als: After going through Duncan's blog and playing with cache this is what i've found:

-Scale is very important. If you don't need the most absolute realistic results, scaling the simulation down will lower calc times. You can then scale the simulation back up to the rest of the scene via cache. Nucleus can also scale all simulations in the scene, but you can't mix and match individual ones.

-Some attributes like self collide (or even collide) can be turned off for dramatic sim time reductions, but is best used for secondary or background effects.

-You can also reduce calculation times by seperating the simulation into layers that are then combined later through nCloth cache.

-Lowering substeps and iterations in nucleus solver attributes will lower calc times.


EDIT:all this above is, of course, using Duncan's poly edit mesh> detach component method.

[VFXartist]

Thanks man, it's always the simple things that kill ya. You rock :buttrock:

[Duncan]

Here are a few points on breakable nCloth:
-If you select verts, edges or faces when making a tearable constraint then it can only tear at those regions, which is more efficient.

-The detach component code internally detachs based on vertices, not edges, so the tearable surface constraint will give "ragged" edges. You can make it more efficient by carefully modelling your own detach edges. Basically initially create your model with all the edges you wish to be breakable being border edges.

-For large rigid chunks you may wish to use separate objects, each with its own nCloth. Constrain the chunks together with a component to component constraint with glueStrength set and the weld method. Then combine, merge vertex, smooth normals and possibly extrude downstream of the nCloth nodes. This allows you to use rigidity on the nCloth nodes(otherwise you need to use high bend/stretch levels which is less efficient). You can also turn off self collision on the nCloth nodes, because they are internally rigid. If instead you were using one cloth node for all the chunks then you would need self collision so that the chunks could intercollide.

-There is bend stiffness on the constraint node, which can be used for glass shatter sorts of effects. However this requires that you have edge nComponents. If you use standard breakable surface setup with edge components it gets extremely slow to use the constraint bend stiffness for a complex surface. We are currently looking at fixing this problem, as it makes it hard to do rigid shatter effects.

Duncan

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