As the title indicates, this 3D skills workshop was focused on dynamic simulations in Maya, more specifically, nCloth. The goal was to explore how it could be used to emulate something breaking or shattering, preferably due to a collision with another object. The approach in this lesson was different from the rest since we were required to first watch the demo and write our own instructions so that we could absorb more of the information and understand the process better when later attempting it ourselves. For me, this wasn’t particularly different to normal and in fact, I found it easier because I usually follow along with the demo at the same time as making notes. Being able to focus on just one was faster. Furthermore, without having to multitask I could concentrate properly on each aspect of the process. However, because I was so used to writing quickly in order to have time to actually do the step myself, most of the demo was spent staring at the screen and waiting for what to write next. I’m grateful for this because I think that the skill I have to jot down information in a summarised format is essential, especially for an industry where ideas change continually and there’s no point in wasting time making notes look pretty and neat when they might be discarded anyway.
Main Demo / Task
For the sake of this blog post, I have merged the instructions that I created and screenshots of my work, even though these were done separately. First, I created a poly plane. This would be the main polygon used for the simulation and would be the one shattering. I scaled it up to be a little larger than the grid and promptly added more subdivisions (15 width and height) in the attribute editor so that nCloth could work effectively. Now came a surprising, yet enjoyable step. I grabbed the multi-cut tool and started slicing up the plane in all different directions, making sure to drag through completely before releasing the mouse key so that the cut would come through.
I found this so satisfying because usually we are told to avoid the multi-cut tool. If you forget to quite the tool, you could continue making unnecessary slices that would mess up the model. It can be dangerous even when using it to insert edge loops because you might accidentally make a cut and ruin the topology without knowing about it. That is why after cutting up the object to satisfaction, I made sure to press ‘Q’ and quite the tool. Afterwards, I drag selected the entire plane in edge mode and went to ‘Mesh’, ‘Triangulate’. I did so because it made all of the faces in those little cuts into triangles, which would help achieve that shattering effect that we’re going for. However, to make sure that all of those triangular pieces actually fall apart, I also had to deselect the plane and drag-select it again, still in edge mode. In ‘Edit Mesh’ this time, I clicked ‘Detach’.
The model was set up, so I could go ahead and change the format menu to ‘FX’ in the top right. Now in object mode, with the plane selected, I applied good old nCloth and saw the nuclear at the centre of the shape as confirmation that it worked. If I hit play here, I could see that a basic simulation was set up. Like almost every time we animated, I then went to the little man with the cog in the bottom right, in order to open up the timeline settings. I changed the playback speed to 24fps x 1 and hit play again, noticing that the sim was more slowed down. It was simply falling at that stage however and I needed it to shatter. So, I created a poly sphere and moved it some distance below the plane, enlargening it slightly so that I had decent damage when simulating the smash. The sphere was the projectile in this scene.
I then had the task of making the sphere travel through the frame in order to shatter it. I think this was my first actual taste of animation in Maya because I didn’t count the turntable as any proper movement (just simple rotation). On frame 1 of the timeline, I hit ‘S’, which I learned was how you create a keyframe. Then, I went to the 20th frame and moved the sphere into its new position, about the same distance above the plane. I hit ‘S’ again and scrubbing through the timeline between the two keyframes, I could see that I had successfully animated the sphere and it moved up and down through the poly plane. The problem was that it didn’t have any collision values and passed straight through the object without affecting it. I knew what to do and went back into ‘nCloth’ with the sphere selected, in order to choose the ‘create passive collider option’.
Everything was almost ready. The final thing to do was keep the poly plane in place (due to nCloth, it fell straight down).
In order to make it stay still, I opened up the outliner and selected ‘nucleus1’. I jumped into the attribute editor after this, to find the gravity option and turn the value down to 0. By turning gravity off completely, the poly plane no longer fell down and only the projectile moved in the scene. I was happy to see that it shattered!
This was where my successful streak for the day ended. It isn’t a Maya lesson if I don’t mess up somehow (I say that with a smile on my face since I genuinely enjoy the lessons and find in my frustration a source of comedy). The optional step that usually comes after we’ve done the basics was to extrude the poly plane in order to make it more like glass and less like some strange, hard paper. I skipped to the beginning of the timeline, selected the top face of the plane and extruded upwards slightly. When I played through this time, however…
The sim seems to work at first but it disappears completely after that and moves far too fast to appreciate anything anyway. I was planning on tinkering with the playback settings but our time for that task was over and we were to move onto the next part of the lesson, which involved attempting the same simulation ourselves, using our own idea.
My Attempt
For my idea, I thought that it would be cool to make an actual projectile for the projectile, and show it piercing through an object. Instead of a plane, I started out with a sphere and followed the same initial steps in the procedure; adding more subdivisions, cutting it up, triangulating and detaching.
After I added nCloth to the object, I could see that the sim already worked because the pieces came apart and sprinkled down. It was really cool to see but I didn’t want to stop there since I had my projectile in mind.
I didn’t use a reference when modeling it but the overall shape was pretty simple and I made it look roughly like a missile of some kind. I was more interested in how it would affect the sphere and what the impact would look like when there was something thinner piercing the object. As before, I made it a passive collider and also turned the gravity of the sphere to down 0 so that it remained stationary throughout the animation.
I was so pleased when I clicked play and saw the sphere breaking apart after the missile moved through it thanks to the keyframes I had placed. It was satisfying seeing it shatter and the pieces sort of floated about, true to the settings I had put in place, suspending them in 0 gravity.
I was looking forward to adding a preset and getting some awesome renders but it didn’t go how I wanted. First of all, the HDRI background that I chose turned out to be very blurry and made the scene look more bizarre rather than more realistic. Second of all, the lighting was all off – everything was overexposed and even when I turned the brightness down, you couldn’t see the gold preset that I had applied, nor the background! It can be really disheartening when you can’t understand why you keep falling short but I’m not too surprised or upset because I don’t put in a lot of time and practice into 3D outside of lessons. I can’t expect polished renders when I haven’t learned about how to control lighting and cameras in Maya and rely only on the basics. Still, I expected something better than this.
Once again, it’s cool to imagine what kind of scenarios this could be used in. I can see the shattering technique being utilised for a space collision, such as a meteor impact and how it makes the planet explode, or perhaps a wrecking ball going through a building (skyscrapers + glass preset!). It can even cause an explosion from the inside if you make the sphere invisible and blow the scale-up in a very short timeframe. Using Bifrost and nCloth, destroying entire cities is easy and you can choose from avalanches (nCloth shatter & rigid bodies) to tsunamis (Bifrost particles & water mesh) and destroy objects in a variety of ways.