This tutorial will introduce you to the basics of Houdini’s Rigid Body Material Based Destruction workflow using the RBD Bullet Solver SOP. It assumes at least a beginner’s understanding of Houdini. Topics covered will be:

  • Preparing geo for destruction
  • Using the RBD Material Fracture SOPs
  • Bringing in a custom hitting object
  • Organizing your network for best workflow
  • Tweaking constraint and material properties
  • Creating intra-material constraints
  • Using multiple constraint types
  • Configuring glass for rendering
  • Debugging and tweaking simulations

GO TO LESSON

CREATED BY

mrCatfish
SEAN LEWKIW

I have almost 30 years of VFX production experience as a VFX Supervisor, DFX Supervisor, CG Supervisor and Houdini FX artist. My credits include Lord of the Rings, Superman Returns, Golden Compass, Watchmen, Mazerunner, and many many more, and stints at Weta, DNEG, Method, Framestore, Cinesite and others. Please see my IMDB profile at https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0507909/ I have extensive teaching experience as both Lead FX Instructor at Lostboys School of VFX in Montreal, and I am currently Head of CG for Onboarding (new hire training) at Cinesite. I focus on the fundamentals, so that you understand what you are doing and why you are doing it -- that you can take what you learned and actually use it to create new content. I have also been using Houdini since its inception, way way back in the before days. I still love what I do and hope to keep on doing it for many years to come!

More from Sean Lewkiw

COMMENTS

  • hound2003 5 years, 5 months ago  | 

    Sry I have a problem downloading the file.
    When i try to use a help browser i see an empty screen with a QE logo and only button is OK/
    When i try to lunch i see a (",") and houdini console

    File "C:/PROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.287/houdini/python2.7libs\houdinihelp\api.py", line 737, in load_example
    raise ValueError("Can't find %r on the Houdini path" % pathpath)
    ValueError: Can't find 'help/examples/nodes/sop/rbdbulletsolver/MaterialFractureTutorial.hda' on the Houdini path

  • mrCatfish 5 years, 5 months ago  | 

    This is Houdini 18.0.287? I suspect that the example HDA is not in your install. If you can, please try the latest daily build.

  • urmibeati 5 years, 5 months ago  | 

    Hi, I am having the same issue as well, I am in 18.0.391 build and am unable to access the files

  • mrCatfish 5 years, 5 months ago  | 

    Can you try the latest production build? 18.0.416?

  • urmibeati 5 years, 5 months ago  | 

    I did, and it worked. Thank You.

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