Object turning to dust

[Bellsey]

ah right, I was referring to a different scene. The one with the monster hand.

[shushens]

In the vimeo video, seems like someone piled up dust and kept it that way and as soon as some invisible support was gone, it all fell down.
But if I want to make it gradual, and not simply downward, but sideways in the wind, then some sort of filling will be necessary, no?
Say, there is an object, and wind is slowly decaying it. As this decay happens, a decayed depleated surface will be seen (which cannot be seen here since everything is falling downwards).
In that case, what should be the plan?

[Bellsey]

doesn't like like filled to me, more emitted from the object.

If you want to have particles drift away, then uses States and apply a Wind force that will move the particles. Then maybe turbulize the particle velocity to spread the effect.

IF I have time at the moment, I will try and produce a video example of what I mean.

[shushens]

I understand the drifting part alright.
But if particles keep drifting, the actual chunk of rock or whatever should keep diminishing/decaying.
How do I take care of this slowly decaying object?
It should have a definite body, a surface that shows.
In the vimeo example, they just all fall down and a little bit sticks to the invisible wall here and there for a while.
There it was not necessary. But in the case I am thinking about, it seems necessary to me.

[Bellsey]

You could use a seperate ICE tree to generate the different pieces which are basically points, and then control the points like you would particles, for each piece.

For example if you had some text, you could use a ICE tree to create point based object (Point Cloud) for each letter you created.
Once you have point cloud model, you can control in all kinds of ways, and how it brakes apart - time, frame, weightmaps, etc.

You can even use ICE to create the initial mesh with instanced geometry, then maybe create something point based form that.

[Tekano]

Am not sure which video of hands you guys are talking of , but I did immediately think of this tutorial made by Bradley Gabe which explores emitting lots of particles on the surface of an object , then creatively dissolving them away, if you havnt seen it it is well worth seeing. here http://vimeo.com/1392786

So using same technique but emitting on surface AND inside volume you can get something approaching that first posted video pretty quickly , so knocked something up for ya. unfortunately I couldnt stop fiddling around with it so its gotten more states than necessary, but anyways I hope I can attach a compound and heres a sample video

[Bellsey]

Yep, that's it, Brad's tutorial basically sums up what I was driving at. I remember at the time, Brad and others doing these videos after we launched and started to show what ICE could do.

My demo was basically along the same lines, but instead of dissolving a hand, I did the reverse and used ICE to create or grow a big 'hand/arm monster.

[shushens]

Seems like Lagoa is coming out on the end of September! Can't wait!

Yes, about this particular style of simulation, it is relatively easier to get away with things, because gravity is essentially the only driving force here.

But say, there is a lump of sandy clay or something and slowly it is decaying in the wind and eventually even the last traces get blown away. Or, some object is buried in sand and as wind blows, sand blows away with it and closely reveals the object (this effect was used wonderfully in several Tomb Raider games).

In such situations, not just the outer surface is concerned, but the inner volume is shown and decayed. This is where I am trying to get at. The effects that require a sense of 'fill'.