How do you animate a building shattering from a collision?

[Anonymous]

Hi I'm new to Maya, slowly teaching myself as I go.

I know some basics, but for a university project I need to animate a building being hit by a meteorite and the building shattering into chunks.

I've looked into the nCloth and Collision stuff but I get this kind of effect like the building is a bouncy castle being hit by a ball. It just wobbles about, not shatters. I've put loads of multi-cut's through the building. Also at one point I did do something that made it shatter but it's like glass, not a solid structure and the building doesn't shatter into chunks.

Also I can't nail the gravity part yet, the building just slips through the grid like there's no floor there.

HELP PLEASE 😄

[Anonymous]

This is how the "Maya pros" do it.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Maya/fil...

[sean.heasley · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous and welcome to the community!

This tutorial should get you started and you can make tweaks from there to achieve the desired result!

Please let me know if this helps or if you need any more assistance!

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

Kudos are greatly appreciated. Everyone likes a thumbs up!

[Anonymous]

I already watched this but I have created a structure that doesn't seem solid, it's like thin without any extrusion so it doesn't give the same effect of chunks breaking up.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Does the object have a lot of divisions? Even a thin object should work as long as there is enough geometry.

When you get a chance, can you please post a screenshot of your model and/or attach it here so I can take a look at it?

Please let me know if anything changes!

[Anonymous]

Struggling to figure this out, also how can I render without it saying Arnold all over the screen?

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Yeah this is happening because the model is so low poly and also because there's little to no thickness.

If you bump the topology you'll get smaller pieces but they'll still be paper thin since there's no thickness.

You're seeing the Arnold watermark because you don't have an Arnold license, you would need to purchase one to remove the watermark or use a different renderer.

[Anonymous]

How can I make the structure solid then? it's all one object at the moment

Also when another object hits it, the collision is like a bouncy castle rather than a shatter effect on the rest of the cathedral

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

You would need to make some extrusions on the faces of the castle to give it thickness however if its all one object that can get very messy very fast.

Out of curiosity, did you model this yourself or download it online?

If you modeled it yourself you should be able to separate the pieces, give them thickness, then combine them again.

[Anonymous]

I made it myself, how would I separate them and make them thicker before joining them all again?

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

If you go to Mesh->Separate that will separate it into individual pieces unless you made this all as one piece and didn't combine them at any point.