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Mini-Contest: Let's Break Some Stuff!

46

I've been enjoying the numerous videos that use the new fracture add-on. So let's smash some stuff to bits and get some cool videos out there with a mini contest! To participate, just add a link to your YouTube video in the comments below. Deadline is next Thursday, and the winner will be featured on the BlenderNation homepage on Friday!  Have fun :)

(Video by JoaoYates).

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

46 Comments

  1. The trouble with this plugin is (as is seen in the falling mugs) the whole thing appears to shatter at once, which is rather unrealistic.
    Also the object doesnt appear to bounce, even if an item smashes, it should bounce slightly...

    the 'bits' seem a little light as well, as if they dont weigh anything either.

    Good start tho :)

      • Even as fast as the speed of shattering is, there's still a sense of progressive shattering with the action. In other words, the crack doesn't appear instantaneously upon impact, but rather as a slight reaction of the impact. Even in this video, there was a very slight moment of contact where the mug wasn't yet broken, but in the process of breaking. It's all very slight details, but, of course, as we know, it's often the slightest things that goes towards that noticeable realism.

      • Actually, from watching that video, I'm pretty sure the shatter is simultanious (at least as far as human perception is concerned). The problem is that the momentum of the vases isn't arrested like it would be if it were a real ceramic object hitting something. Everything just keeps going the direction it was going.

      • It seems to me that the object breaking all at the same speed is not the main issue here. (Because vibrations run down the surface and cause cracks and shattering at very high speed). It seems to me that the problem would be to get the Voronoi function to create the large chunks and the small pieces, instead of making the size too uniform.

        I went back and watched the example video again, and in the first animation, there was a noticeable progression of shattering. So there you go.

    • Matt Heimlich on

      I think the real problem is that cracks don't appear to propagate from the impact point, but this can currently be faked by running cell fracture using child verts from a small child object placed at the point of impact.

  2. Loving this add-on. Little buggy sometimes she generating the shards, but generally on the right lines. I just have a quick question though. I cannot work out how to get the smooth shading like with the mugs and the vases in the film. When I put smooth shading on, it just looks like a messy bad normal party. Any ideas?

  3. Nice contest. And man, I'm really interested in the development of this feature! It's going to be amazing, for both games and animations.

    Though, if I may offer one piece of constructive criticism about this fracture feature based on videos I've seen so far, it seems like these objects break instantaneously rather than progressively. Perhaps if we had a way to control just when parts of the structure breaks apart, perhaps via some form of "breakage weight painting" to help a controllable rate of breakage.

    That way, the higher surfaces of the objects do not break at the exact same time the parts that come into contact with a hard surface. While it may seem to all happen instantaneously, if you observe objects breaking at certain slower speeds (or high action in slow motion), structures tend to break progressively--that is, with cracks that rapidly grow from the point of contact as opposed to destruction occurring instantaneous throughout the entire surface at a time, in most cases of destruction.

    Anyways, enough criticism there. I'm looking forward to seeing what people creative with this feature in development!

  4. Nazzareno Giannelli on

    big issue: I'm a newbie in Blender and I cannot find out how to animate an object, like a vase or a plate, and make it break against a wall. I understood how to break static objects throwing some rigid body against them...but i need the opposite :( any tutorial explaining this? any tips?

  5. Nazzareno Giannelli on

    I've no time and knowledge right now to finish properly the animation I wanted to do for this mini contest (see image). So...let's post this old fracture tool test! :) nothin' special..nothin' special at all, but...you know..I still have to practice a lot to reach what I want with Blender
    EnJoy
    http://youtu.be/Ixg62EEngGg

  6. I spent most of yesterday trying to get this to work, but for some reason, my model will not fracture properly. I tried every setting and possible fix that I could think of. I'm assuming that it's a bug.

  7. I spent most of yesterday trying to get this to work, but for some reason, my model will not fracture properly. I tried every setting and possible fix that I could think of. I'm assuming that it's a bug. Loved the contest idea, though.

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