Fracture has been a challenge for VFX along the years, creation of cracks and collapse of structures are still in the domain of practical effects. Models are nice to see at, but expensive to build and scale issues make them useless in many dynamics situations. Breaking apart a real model lacks always of repeatability and when collapsing big structures the security norms become a major issue.
In this first release Pdi! makes possible to overcome all of this issues by digital simulation. It is able to crack any kind of brittle material as stone, glass or stucco. The set up is very easy, use Shatter it! tool to prefracture your object or just build a structure by blocks or pieces of any shape, select all of them as a fracture object and hit play, this procedure also makes the setting of texture coordinates easier. Once in simulation Pdi! will compute all the stress forces that create cracks and finally makes the objects collapse. Fracture objects can be static as a building or dynamic as a meteor, you can create as many fracture objects as you want, and make them impact each other. Control is always an issue in dynamics simulation, in this sense the powerful stress tools of Pdi! allow to define the start of the cracks and the way of propagation just by setting fracture frames, in which the crack will begin, and visually select regions of the object with different hardness. |
