Can someone recommend a program to make destructible debris?
polycounter lvl 11
I was wondering if anybody could give me a recommendation for a program that will help make destructible debris easier.
I'm making an exploding rock.
So far I've checked out Rayfire and Volumebreaker.
I was wondering if there were any others that I might be missing.
I'm making an exploding rock.
So far I've checked out Rayfire and Volumebreaker.
I was wondering if there were any others that I might be missing.
Replies
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/fracture-voronoi
this basically does the same thing but as a modifier which is much easier to use imo. i'd be wary of trying to do any simulation in max though - the dynamics tools are much worse than mayas
Since it solves in the viewport you can have a simulation running and interact with it. For example I made a rope bridge, fully dynamic using the universal constraint. I made several kinematic pieces, grabbed them in the viewport and used them to effect the bridge with the move tool.
The constraint system is brilliant, simple to use, very flexible. It bakes and unbakes easily making it easy to do complex sets of simulations that all interact with each other but don't all have to be running and solving at the same time. Because it bakes its incredibly easy to import baked simulations into game engines as simple bone based animation.
Personally I think Maya's rigid body dynamics has some catching up to do. They haven't worked on it in a while while MassFX is still very much in development. It's not as robust as Thinking Particles, Rayfire or PullItDown FumeFX and I don't think it ever will be, but then Maya dynamics can't compete with those plug-ins either.
So yea, grab a fracture script, fire up MassFX and destroy something.
Personaly I would do what Mark said.
http://loran-cg.blogspot.ca/2011/10/kaboom-massfx.html
http://loran-cg.blogspot.ca/2011/10/krumbler.html
Takes a bit of tweaking but the results are pretty cool.
http://rayfirestudios.com/
It's been used on a lot of high-end hollywood movies aswell as AAA games.
As for keying gravity, you can pick a gravity object and target the gravity force, which is fully keyable in every way. You can't key the global directional value in the MassFX panel, but that's for constant unrelenting gravity just like in the real world.
You can use all of the standard forces that have been in max for years (Displace, Drag, Wind, Motor, PBomb, Push, Vortex) with MassFX, they can be applied on a per object basis (or to a group of objects) and they are fully keyable just like they've always been.
I guess you might be pushing the "Start simulation without animation" it will ignore the animation you do in the forces, but that's normal, its meant to give you a relaxed point to start the animation from so things don't just drop or freak out when the sim starts. If you click "Start simulation" the animations are taken into account.
You use Kinematic objects if you want to animate a physics object.
As for keying objects on and off you can bake the simulation down and do whatever you need to with the keys, add/remove keys, apply a layer and tweak the animation. Baked objects still interact with the live objects so you can bake down parts, tweak them how you like and run other parts that will still interact with them.
For example you do an explosion and you can't get the large chunks to settle how you want so you bake it down and tweak the animation. The rest of the objects still interact with those objects even though they aren't actively simulating.
You aren't stuck with whatever the sim gives you and you don't have to simulate it all perfectly in one push.
It does have a few warts:
1) You can't bake down a dynamic body to keys and then have it turn back on and be dynamic again. It has to be dynamic the whole time but you edit the keys after the fact and use separate copies of objects and seperate simulations to achieve what you need in those cases, again it's getting away from the whole idea that you need one perfect simulation run all at the same time.
2) The particle system doesn't interact with massFX, that I know of, maybe there is a way to hook it up in particle flow but I haven't found it yet.
It's still in development and I wouldn't be surprised if that's something they want to include in the future. If it's really important to what you're doing, there are half a dozen plug-ins that do physical simulations better. MassFX isn't a high end tool but what it does, it does well. I just hope they don't stall out on it like they have other things in the past.
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