Softimage ICE fracturing?

[curly]

Hi,

On the Autodesk The Area I saw a demo of an ICE compound fracturing an object. Are there more tutorials on this -> with gravity and rigid body collisions.
I know there's something like StudioNEST Kratos. Has anyone more experience with this feature? ( I think that's something we are missing and that makes me still look a Sidefx Houdini otherwise
Softimage would be almost the PERFECT 3D content creation package for me.)


These guys are planning to do a version of their software for Softimage

http://www.pulldownit.com/forum/index.php?topic=501.15

Moderator edit: please use the URL tags - HB

[origin]

For rbd you got either builtin physx or momentum 2 (which, in my opinion is much more stable than physx)
For voronoi fracturing - free Kratos
2012 will have ice modelling tools so maybe we we see more tools for (interactive) demolition.

I must say that latest built of Rayfire got some serious speed improvements (there is also volumebreaker and PDI for max)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMJeHV59hjg

[Hirazi Blue]

Hi,
These guys are planning to do a version of their software for Softimage

http://www.pulldownit.com/forum/index.php?topic=501.15

From what I read there, they're aren't planning a version, but they're (seriously) considering it, which sadly isn't exactly the same. ;)

BTW - Waiting for Softimage to catch-up with Houdini could mean a long wait. And although it might seems that this is the path Softimage has chosen, personally I wouldn't necessarily welcome it...

[nuverian]

I still feel SI is lacking a bit in the demolition/fracturing side considering competition.

I wouldn't like to start a new post for a question of mine very relative to this post: Can we in SI or even using momentum somewhow glue the pieces together so they don't all fall appart when they are not Sleeping. I see this exist in almost all other Fracturing and/or Simulation solutions. And it's not that I just want a feature, it's possible one of the most convenient ones for such tasks.

[Chris_TC]

Can we in SI or even using momentum somewhow glue the pieces together so they don't all fall appart when they are not Sleeping.

I'm pretty sure this is a default option in Momentum? But even if it isn't - since everything is exposed in ICE, you get a ridiculous amount of control over just about everything.

[nuverian]

No I don't think momentum works this way, or at least I haven't seen any simulation like this online. I consider this a very "default" behabiour to have for me to get into ICE for it.

[Chris_TC]

No I don't think momentum works this way, or at least I haven't seen any simulation like this online. I consider this a very "default" behabiour to have for me to get into ICE for it.

Um, maybe we're talking about different things? Momentum 3 has dynamic fracturing, the object stays in one piece until it breaks.

[nuverian]

Yeah. Probably we are talking about something different. What I'm talking about is on the simulation rather than the fracturing part. The different clusters are kept "glued" untill they receive a specified force before they break apart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX6o7OCOuf8

Newcomer alert: please use the URL tags - HB

[Chris_TC]

Yeah. Probably we are talking about something different. What I'm talking about is on the simulation rather than the fracturing part. The different clusters are kept "glued" untill they receive a specified force before they break apart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX6o7OCOuf8

Oh, there are a ton of ways to do this in Momentum. For example here, timecode 3:05
http://vimeo.com/29084388

Or here, timecode 10:45:
http://vimeo.com/20767496

[nuverian]

Thanks.. Yes I've seen those videos and the parts regarding clustering but had my doubts.

So lets say we have a fractured wall and we want to create just a whole in it because a random object is passing through it. (the typical example). Of course we don't want all the pieces start falling apart, but rather only the ones that enough impulse is applied to them by that random object or by the rest of the chunks.

We would go about it by putting the whole wall into a cluster and then releasing chunks based on the impulse that is applied to them. I don't have momentum, so I don't know if thats how it goes or similar.

For such a simple scene I know that it could be done manually, meaning that i could just select the pieces I want and make them rigid bodies, but for a more complex scene (house) it's impossible.

[Chris_TC]

We would go about it by putting the whole wall into a cluster and then releasing chunks based on the impulse that is applied to them. I don't have momentum, so I don't know if thats how it goes or similar.

I don't have the new Momentum versions either, so I don't know which things are exposed as "one-button" solutions (things like an impulse threshold should be very straightforward with Momentum ICE, but that still requires a few nodes and some knowledge of ICE).
Hopefully someone with Momentum can chime in and clarify. Or you could try the mailing list or Exocortex themselves.

[fabricio.chamon]

We would go about it by putting the whole wall into a cluster and then releasing chunks based on the impulse that is applied to them

that's pretty much the same workflow in momentum. Cluster + hitimpact arrays.

hitimpacts are the bullet collision impulses exposed to ICE via scalar arrays.

Unfortunatelly, in my opinion there are two things playing against momentum in it's current version, I can't tell you if they are bullet limitations or not, but here they are:

1) let's say we have a wall made of many bricks. If they are in a cluster, bullet treats all pieces as one unique body, thus the hitimpacts are the same for all pieces. This means that one cannot use impulse alone as a condition to break the chunks. You'll have to query for a second attribute that can be distance to collision object for example. Of course this leads to imprecisions on the simulation (which can sometimes be ignored depeding on the scene).

2) missing per island initial states. Momentum already has a nice feature that treats each polygon insland of an object as a separate rigid body (aka Deform Body). This specific "wall hit by cannon ball" scenario could be resolved without any clustering if there was a way to set sleeping mode for each island separately. As it is now, if you set a deform body init state to sleeping and hit a corner of the wall, everything falls down to the ground.

other than that, the level of control you have over your simulation with momentum+ice is unbelievably powerful. So if Helge could tackle this issues + some minor fracture bugs in the next version/update/patch it will become the best simulation solution out there.

my 2 cents.

[Mr.Core]

In my opinion, clusters are not perfect solution for this,maybe rigid and soft constaints are the best way. If you read some articles about this topic, there is a discussion of that by example of some great movies like 2012 \ transformers 3 etc.
This way also allow users to get applied impulse ( hitimpact ) per each object ( island ) and if it greater than some treshold = break constraint ant it will lead to breaking only 2 chunks, so, I think that is enough precision.

[nuverian]

I see...

@mr.core: is that methodology something that exists or can be done without a headache with momentum, or it's a suggestion as to how it should be done?

I remember on vimeo that your influence/inspiration comes from rayfire. Is that how it's done with rayfire?

[Mr.Core]

it is more suggestion based on some articles. ( see for example this if interesting ). I didnt see if there is setting of constraints from ICE in momentum and if there is really no this ability that is is headache to build this" glue" rig, yes ( but I am not digging mom deeply ). Maybe scripts could help, but i am not sure. Sorry for noise.

Regarding for rayfire - probably, that's black box, but something like "rebars" is definitely made by using of soft constraints.