Hi, I’m not sure if this would go under modelling or animation, but whatever. I want to make a building explode. How would I go about doing this in blender. I thought about using the physics engine, but I have no idea how to set an initial speed on that. I can’t use dupliverted stuff because it won’t all fit together to form the building at the start. Is there anyway to cut an object into fragments, and apply physics to them? I don’t want the ‘fragments’ to be just the polygons of the object.
I was thinking about this myself. you would have to build the building piece by piece (copying some parts like bricks and stuff), give every piece some collision geometry (make it an dynamic actor with a ridged body) and make an empty in the middle of the building with a very big collision bubble so that it pushes every thing apart. run the game and bake it to the ipo.
This is just a guess, I've never actually tried it before.Check this out:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?p=981224
Also, with the new (2.50) particle system, there will be an Explode modifier that can be used with certain kinds of particles to make objects explode or shatter. I don’t know of any tutorials on that available yet, but I’ll be covering it in my upcoming book (second in my sig).
apparently the new blender 2.5 thats getting released in october 2009 (this year)
this is a REALTIME simulation not rendered at all and its showcasing the new explode modifier, but i could be wrong.
here are 2 links demonstating this new ‘explode modifier’
oh and the second one is rendered.