Hi all,

I am doing a project where I want to blow up a building in DOPs (I posted earlier about it). I'm looking for a way to pre-fracture geometry for the simulation. I was looking at developing my own OTL to do it. I managed to construct a simple one which pre-fractured a brick-wall. After looking on the forums I know this is an issue which has been talked about a lot. Today I was shown a shatter tool in Maya by a friend. I did a quick experiment and shattered a sphere into 100 pieces and exported some of the pieces as OBJ files. I imported them into Houdini and they worked fine as an RBD Fractured object in DOPs. The tool in Maya is in the Dynamics section and its simply called ‘Shatter’. Did anyone else know about this and has anyone else tried using this Maya tool for pre-fracturing for use in DOPs?

Cheers for any feedback….

It sounds like you've done a valid test, and it all works. The only thing left to do would be to automate the reading in of 8 million OBJ files into a single Geo object…

I would rather try to develop my own OTL but I thought this may be a good backup plan. I was just wondering on peoples opinion on switching back and forth between apps on the same project…always makes me a bit nervous…..!

I gave a fast try to that “shatter” but i didnt menaged to get even a Torus (polygonal) shattered… could you please drive me on how you did the test until -> houdini?…
cheers thanks a lot

sum][one
I gave a fast try to that “shatter” but i didnt menaged to get even a Torus (polygonal) shattered… could you please drive me on how you did the test until -> houdini?…
cheers thanks a lot

pre-shatter you need to edit->delete by type->History

Perhaps I'm mistaken but doesn't the cleaveSOP that's on the odforce codex do pretty much the same thing as the maya shatter?

http://www.odforce.net/codex/index.php?page=5&sec=modeling&catlimit=&sorty=&limit=5 [odforce.net]

Cheers,

/Rick

Yota's right, you need to delete the construction history before the shatter will work in Maya, don't know why as I never use Maya.

Cleave SOP huh? Sounds like just what I need!

Cheers..

I've had a quick look at the cleave SOP. It only subdivides individual polygons and nothing larger. For example if you had a model of a china teapot, you couldn't use the Cleave SOP to carve it into, say, 10 pieces and then smash it in DOPs. The only thing it would do is subdivide each of the polys making up the teapot into smaller polys. I'm sure it must be useful…but I can't think what for of the top of my head….will someone enlighten me?!

What effect does the Maya shatter create.
Is it
A. like randomly applying the clip sop through the entire object.

B. Does it actually create solid fractured lumps, like you get using the cookie sop repeatedly.

C. Some thing different and better…

Just interested. I'm sure it would be possible to put an otl together to do both A and B completely automatically and if it's C then what are the details?

Simon
What effect does the Maya shatter create.

in maya there are 3 types of shatter
-surface…broke the surface in pieces whit or whitoud extruding the resulting shards
-cracks…like surface but implemet also only cracks line from a selected vertex
-solid shatter…whit an apply interior material …solid shatter in maya have a strange issue about history cheking…you have to tweak a bit the mel code to make it works

the output can be:
shapes,only cracks on surfaces,rigid bodies or softbodies or in case of cracks and surface shatter also sets of points whitout break up the object

I think all 3 can me easily done in hounini…sum][one have done an otl than is really similar to maya solid shatter but really more time consuming

In maya solid shatter can be replace whit a really good plug-in called Blastcode .

ops: sorry for my poor english

yota pretty much said it all. It just seemed like a good tool to me as you can specify surface shatter (like the geo has a thickness but is not completely solid) or solid shatter (like the cookie SOP). It seemed fast too, I split a sphere into 100 pieces and it took about a minute, wokred great in DOPs as a fractured object too. I have started making an OTL which is like a random cookie using te SOP solver (with a lot of help from a friend…pbowmar take a bow…!) but I was considering saving myself time by using the Maya shatterer …

Hey Dean,
I'd suggest using the Maya tool if it works. In production, use the best tool for the job, doesn't matter what package! I do think it's sad that Houdini has the best RBD system available, but still no way to actually easily make chunks to be simulated!! That thing I showed you works sometimes but the Cookie SOP is sensitive and often will create bits that aren't solid, or other problems…

Cheers,

Peter B

Hey Pete,

Yeah, I think I'll make use of it. I'm spending a little time looking at your fracture system to try to replicate it just for learning purposes, as then I can learn how to use the SOP solver (which to me looks like it could be really useful for absolutely loads of stuff) and i'll probably pick up other little bits of useful info too! Cheers for your help, hope you enjoyed the carnival!

I'm going to see superman again today…awesome!! Heh heh…..