2012 Earthquake/Thinking Particles?

I was wondering how to create something like this (from 1:11 - 1:21):

I have a few problems with this, however. One is, the fracture tools don’t create voronoi crackle-shaped pieces. If you take a look at the video again, the pieces of the ground look like the voronoi crackle texture. Is there a way to break a mesh up by using a texture?

Another problem is, how do I get only some of the particles to fall? I saw a great test using 3DsMax here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJrKLmzX-0s

Is there a way to recreate that in Blender? Thanks for your help :yes:

That is a great FX movie.

how do I get only some of the particles to fall?

Use multiple emitters then you can control timing as you see fit. You can set the influence for gravity on the alternate emitters to different values to cause only some to fall or others to fall at a “slower” rate.

I thought Blender fracture could do voronoi style cracking? It has been a while since I played with, however, I might be mistaken.

No, it’s not possible. At least, not with the Fracture Tools. But I don’t know how else I would do it…

dynamic paint + explode modifier =

That is interesting, do you have a BLEND file for that…?

here it is
in this one I used a lattice instead of dynamic paint

Test.blend (595 KB)

That is quite interesting. I am still not sure what role the lattice plays? Does it actually activate the particles? You mention dynamic paint…is that part of it?

there are two planes
one with a particle system and an explode modifier
under that is another plane with a lattice modifier and collision enabled
the lattice deforms the bottom plane and cause it to collide with the one on top
Instead of the of the lattice you can also use dynamic paint and set it to displace

Thanks for the explanation and the BLEND file!