Hi guys.

I've been muckin' around in Houdini Indie 15.5 trying to get a very simple effect of pushing apart fractured geometry in all directions from the center (or any point of origin actually) and so far not very happy with the results.

I've used the suggested “Magnet Force” method but to be honest this doesn't yield an acceptable result for a true bomb force effect. The various force nodes in Houdini seem to merely generate singular directional forces which is also not desired. I am aware of the method to set up a network of points or a point cloud of sorts that then all have a point force on them to drive dynamics however this is a convoluted and inefficient method at best.

The desired result is very simple. If you are familiar with Maya which also uses Bullet dynamics, you may be familiar with the Volume Axis Force attribute which allows us to perform what I'm describing in one fell swoop. This is what I'd like to achieve in Houdini.

Any insight into successfully achieving a true and accurate dynamic behavior of a bomb force would be greatly appreciated. Thank you kindly for your time and thoughts!

Hi, I'm curious to know about the point cloud / point force method you mentioned, were you referring to using POPs to create forces?

I'm also not very familiar with Maya, a google search for Volume Axis Force did not give much to look at in terms of reference. The closest thing I got was for Volume Axis Field.
Is it something like this video?


Simplest I can quickly come up with (but probably not a true and accurate bomb force) is by using a POP Wrangle to define the direction from a center point.

H15.5.717 Indie

you can as well just use POP Axis Force or POP Attract nodes to create radial forces out of the box