Hey guys!
I need to make a small piece of land crack and then blow up. I’m looking for the best alternative to make some small separate pieces. It’s a cartoony explosion, so there’s no need for particles yet.
I was looking at some suggestions on the internet, but I’m looking for some inputs here too.
Keep in mind, it doesn’t have to be very detailed.
The best way to do this is to do it manually 
Plan your ‘damage’ and divide the mesh accordingly. It’s not fun but you will get the results you want.
If you are looking for ‘quick fix’ solutions in XSI you could try the ‘Shatter’ script, I think it can be found on XSI base.
Blastcode is a terrific plug in for Maya (no idea about XSI versions) but it might be too overkill for what you want to do?
An alternative way to generate shatter effects is to try the free version of Houdini and use the Shatter (SOP) then export the results as an .OBJ.
However, most people who have tried this technique end up resorting to the old fashioned geometry cut,chop, extract, extrude and bevel methods.
I’m sure ICE could offer some sweet method to problem but I have had no time to delve into it yet
So you could model the geometry for the ground in pieces, make them all passive rigid bodies, then either use ice to create a particle explosion and create some object collisions and at the collision animate the passive objects to active rigid bodys (set a key on the tab), basically the particles will be debree and the rigids will be big hunks, there is no bomb (think thats what its called) modifier like in max but the effect of doing it manually will create some amazing results, unfortunaly it requires a bit more technical know how,
Play with the dynamics and collisions and i am certain you will be happy with the results.
I did a test with breaking glass a while ago:
http://www.friendly-elf.de/comanche/breakglass.mov
If you’re interested in the scene file:
http://www.friendly-elf.de/comanche/Window.zip
Interesting thing is, it’s simulated with Syflex, because rigid body dynamics are much much much slower 
Not exactly what you’re asking for, but maybe a starting point.
Cheers,
Andreas
Nice video Comanche and thanks for sharing the scene!
Any tips on how you acomplished the breaked glass to start with?
Hi Rui,
I’ve started with a disc primitive, moved points to bring it into the basic shape. Then added some loops, did some cuts with the kinfe tool and finally applied a shape jitter.
Select all polys and break them into pieces with “disconnect components”. To add some thickness I’ve used Helge’s “solidify” script you’ll find in Net View.
Hope that helps, cheers,
Andreas
another way of doing this http://www.motionblur.it/
download the XSI Shatter and the Perlin noise is cool too.
If you have XSI 7 with ICE, you can get really cool shapes using the turbulize node, then explode the mesh and use the Tiny Tickness or Solidify to add some depth.
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.