July 8, 2011

Maya’s dynamics tools have stood the test of time. In this tutorial, we look at a classic workflow for shattering an object into pieces.

This is an hour-long series of six free videos. Some of the learning outcomes of this tutorial include:

Model the shards of a broken object
Animate the initial movement with keyframes
Switch dynamics on at a certain time
Push rigid bodies in a desired direction
Fine-tune rigid body and solver attributes
Bake the simulation to keyframes
Toggle visibility to achieve “object substitution”
Render a preview animation

Supplemental material

breakage_assets.zip

This Zip file includes a Maya ASCII scene used in the tutorial. It also includes the open source crackMe script, developed by Chase Cooper.

Supplemental material

Lesson Notes

Lesson Notes complement tutorials. They reduce complex multi-stage procedures to short bullet points. Brief explanations reinforce key concepts. The outline format helps learners focus on the content, rather than spend a lot of time reading. To access Lesson Notes, you need to join the guild.

Here is a sample of the Lesson Notes:

1. Workflow overview
   1. This is an old-school workflow
      1. Newer methods do exist, e.g. DMM, Digital Molecular Matter
      2. The version of DMM bundled with Maya 2012 is just a demo, with severe limitations
      3. This “crippleware” version of DMM is unsuitable for our needs
   2. Model the shards of the broken object
      1. Shatter tool
      2. crackMe script
      3. By hand if necessary
   3. Create a simple rig including the unbroken object and its shards
   4. Animate the rig with keyframes
      1. Adjust the function curve in the Graph Editor to make the object accelerate
   5. Apply Rigid Body Dynamics to the shards
      1. Control movement with Gravity and Radial Fields
      2. Fine-tine rigid body and solver attributes
   6. Keyframe the visibility of the objects
   7. Calculate and store the dynamic solution with Bake Simulation
   8. Render the animation to disk with Playblast or Batch Render

    

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