Elder Scrolls Forum: Breakthrough: HUGH Discovery!

Sure, I can do a basic tutorial... I'll do a full-fledged tutorial with pictures and all later and post it to my site, along with some additional animation tutorials!

Here's the bare-bones basics to get ya going though...

1. Create your mesh.

2. Decide which parts of your mesh will break apart.

3. Using Edit Mesh, select the parts of your mesh that will break.

4. Select ONE part at a time, either using Vertex, Face, or Polygon selections.

5. Use DETACH to seperate that part of the mesh. I reccomend giving the detached object a useful name, as you could end up with quite a few pieces when you're done.

6. Repeat step 5 until all the breakable pieces of your mesh have been detached. DO NOT detach the last piece of your mesh.

7. Add a box to your scene, large enough to "catch" all the pieces when they break. This will represent your ground plane. Position this mesh so that it is just below, but does not intersect any part of the bottom of your mesh, or you will get an "error" type message stating that there are intercollisions, and you'll end up with some outrageous simulation times.

8. Create another box, some distance above your mesh. It should be as long as the mesh, but only .1 units wide and .1 units deep. This will be the impacting force on your mesh that causes it to shatter.

9. Switch to the Utilities panel. Now this is where things get complicated (not really)...

10. Choose Reactor either from the list of utility buttons, or from More if you don't have Reactor on your Utility rollout.

11. Select each breakable part of your mesh, and expand the Properties section of the rollout. You'll see a section called "Mass" in kg's. Enter an amout of mass for each part of your mesh. Keep in mind that you should have some idea of what your mesh "weighs", and divide its mass up among the number of fragments your mesh will be broken into when shattered.

Example: Breaking a 10 kg sphere into 8 pieces of roughly the same size, the individual pieces will have a mass of 1.25 kg.

12. Leave the Elasticity and Friction values at .3.

13. Set the mass of your force box to something like 10 kg.

14. DO NOT repeat DO NOT set a mass for your ground plane. It HAS to be 0 or it will "fall" when you simulate.

15. Once all your mesh pieces have a mass, go to the Create panel, and select Helpers. From the dropdown, select Reactor.

16. You'll need two helpers, a RBCollection and a Fracture. Add one of each to your scene. Place them somewhere out of the way, but somewhere you can easily select them.

17. Change to the Modify panel.

18. Click on the RBCollection, and choose Add. Add your ground plane box to the RBCollection and your force box.

19. DO NOT add anything else to the RBCollection.

20. Select the Fracture helper.

21. In the fracture helper there is a button marked RBCollection. Click that, and select the RBCollection in your scene. That associates your RBCollection with the Fracture.

22. Select Add a little further down the rollout, and add all the breakable parts of your mesh. Add ONLY the breakable parts of your mesh to the Fracture.

23. To keep things simple, select each part of your mesh, and click the radio button "Keystone". Keystones, basically, tell the simulation that "if this object is broken, it will cause adjacent objects to break.

24. A little further down the rollout, you'll see something called "Impulse". The default value is 10. Change this to 5, and remember where this setting is, as you may need to adjust it later to suit your needs.

25. Take a deep breath, because you're almost done! Then switch back to the Utilities panel.

26. Expand the Simulation section of the rollout, and click the "Run Simulation" button. Depending on the complexity of your scene, this could take a while.

27. Once the simulation is done, expand the Display section, and click the "Display in Window" button. This will bring up the simulation display. You might need to reposition the view, as it's typically to-down. Once you've gotten your mesh in a view you like, press the "P" key to play your simulation. You'll see your force box fall down and strike your mesh, and you'll see your mesh break apart. If parts of it fly off the ground plane, you'll need to make the ground plane larger.

28. Once you've viewed the simulation, close the simulation window.

29. If you don't like the way things have broken, change the Impulse value a little at a time. Then view in window again, until you're happy with the results.

30. Once you're happy with the simulation, and have closed the simulation window, press Play on the animation control bar. You'll see your animation play back.

31. That's it. Really. It's done. Hide your ground plane and force box, and export your animation to a .NIF.

32. Send cash, checks, or money orders to me! =)

Pax,
Indigo

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"On a long enough timeline the survival rate of everyone drops to zero." -Tyler Durden

Post Extras:

Begin Garbage_Man

Short GoAway
Float Timer

If ( OnActivate == 1)
set GoAway to 10
disable
endif

if ( GoAway == 10 )

set Timer to ( Timer + GetSecondsPassed )

if ( Timer >= 4 )
setDelete, 1
set Timer to 0
endif
endif

end