Is there any moderately easy and not completely back breaking method of creating something that looks like destruction in blender, e.g, a bridge collapsing? I was hoping I woulnt have to model every single piece of debris, and i thought about using particles… but if anyone has any ideas…
there is a script for shattering meshes but it only breaks objects down into it constituent quads/tris, not very realistic (but could be sufficient if its in the distance). Also if I recall correctly it is hard to make the parts do what you want.
Maybe you should model the object as a single mesh then break it (split it) up into smaller objects (say girders etc.) and make a hard body simulation (or stiff soft body sim.) for the collapse. You can apply wind to the softbody to blow stuff around. I’ve never got around to it but I did want to do this once on helicopter blades but found their interactions at high velocity to hard!
just so happens i actually had done what you said (breaking the mesh), but i just animated each piece separately. I’ve never really got to know how to use hard/soft body stuff. Do you know any good tutorials for that, or any tips you have?
Thanx a lot:D
I have only used the cloth simulation for soft bodies but I’m sure a quik look at media wiki Blender would turn up something.
My best tip is to trial an effect first, start small. For example make a floor and a beam suspended in the air, set the properties and animate that, then add more beams or boxes for interactions. Get used to the variables and what effect they have then apply that to your model in the original project.
Sorry I can’t be of more help there.
ok thanx anyway:) , i’ll try that stuff
I just saw something about bullet physics yesterday that does partially what you are talking about, the collapse part anyway, maybe you could combine it with the mesh shatter script:
Cooooool realistic collapse! Now all you have to do is know how to build a realistic bridge. 