Shattering Concrete

#1

Hey everybody,
I’ve recently transferred from maya to max for learning FX. I’ve realized Max has some options that are much more user friendly for getting quick jobs done at work. My question is…I want to achieve the effect of shattering a heavy piece of concrete (example, corner of a building) and have like 5 or 6 big chunks turn in to like 25 pieces of debris when they finally hit the ground. Is this something that would be easier to do in pflow setup? or Rigid bodies. I want the object to be solid…so when chunks slowly crumble off…you see the inside of it. Is this something “procutter” and reactor could tackle? Or is there a better solution. My first post …thought I’d see what you guys thought.

Thanks for any input…I’m using max 9 at work…and you guys are definitely helping the learning curve!

#2

This will be better realized with reactor. Check out the reference on fracture - you can control which chunks break at what time/impulse, etc.

#3

Check out the Rayfire Tool, Split It Up, or Rifter.

Edit: I prefer scripted particles over reactor. For better control.

#4

Make sure you create the 4 big pieces yourself first

Use a script (quite a few free ones knocking about) to slice up the 4 pieces into small chunks. This will be faster than doing it yourself with Pro Cutter

Then you could use PFlow scripted particles, the idea is the solid pieces of fractured geometry is controlled by PFlow so you can add forces, gravity etc to it.

Alan McKay has a video tutorial showing how this is done here
http://www.allanmckay.com/tut/test.swf

Alternativly use reactor a Rigid Body collection and Fracture. Fracture will hold the pieces together (the many bits of stone created from the script) until a certain force is applied to it, this could be something hitting the building and secondary effects like hitting the floor can influence how many of the pieces will seperate from the main chunk, gravity is handled by reactor.

Unfortunatly Reactor help is a little on the light side but if you go that route let me know and I can help.

I have several reactor test renders on YouTube here: http://uk.youtube.com/profile?user=GeoffCoope

Thanks
Anim

#5

Heya AnimG. Good post. Think this guy ever came back to look at the responses?:rolleyes:

Good to see ya.
Bill

#6

If not at least somebody else may find the post useful :slight_smile:

Cheers Bill

Geoff

#7

i’ve have been trying to do the same effect, however when i use reactor, as soon as my force is applied to the fracture, the peices explode WAY out and super fast… so I tried allan mcKays tutorial on fracturing with pflow. I copied his birth script EXACTLY, however, maxscript is saying there are errors on this segment:

on Init pCont do
(
global geom = $Object* as array
)

but this line works perfectly when i run it through maxscript listener.

any ideas?? help!! please.

#8

I can’t remember the script or tutorial off the top of my head but a common mistake with the copy paste approach is naming. Take a look at the names of your geometry and take a look at the script. Do the names match? According to the script all your geometry being driven by the script should be named with names starting with Object. Such as Object_01, Object_02, etc.

Let me know if that helps.

Bill

Edit: Also this looks like a quick and dirty script. If you’re looking to drive alot of geometry with this you’ll need to look into using just the channels you need. Or else your calculations and particle flow updates are going to take forever. This doesn’t look like the whole script. Or maybe he just ran through it quick and simple.

#9

yeah, that was just the snippet of the script that was highlighted when it told me that the script has errors. and yes the object names match with thte script(i’m pretty sure) the object frags generated when i used SplitItUp are named Object01, Object02…etc. tried it on a new scene because this scene has been giving me issues, and got the same problem :frowning:

#10

ok, I got the script to work… actually i found a different script. but now I am wondering if there is a way to use camera map with pFlow? I tried mapping object with Box1, but it wont let me pick the camera object… any suggestions?

#11

If you fractured object is exploded out at a crazy velocity its usually down to the collision tolerance setting in reactor. try lowering it to 0.5

#12

Thanks AnimeG, that seems to work better. still a bit finiky, but alot better. thank you.

#13

Here’s a simple example scene using reactor, notice the top corner block is further divided into smaller blocks held together by fracture. This block does not break apart with the initial collision, but breaks up after it falls to the ground and hits the remaining wall. Just alter the velocity value to keep the parts together for longer. Create Animation from the Reactor rollout to perform the simulation.
Theres also a simple pFLow in there to generate a bit more debris/dust. This could be enhanced to instanced geometry to get some nice little bits of rubble. Have a look, might not be any use to you…

cheers

#14

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