Reverse shatter with Dynamics

[Jeremy Allen]

First off, I’m pretty new to C4D so hopefully there is a simple solution for this that I just don’t know about yet. Also, I’m using the 11.5 demo, so I have access to all the features…

Final Scene: Random chunks from text are laying on a floor, static. The chunks start to vibrate and all start to move towards a central location to form a word, piece by piece.

Now, I’ve figured a couple of ways to do the initial text shatter. With explosion FX I can reverse the time so all the pieces come together, but I can’t figure out how to get it to interact with the floor. If I use a fracture object and rigid body tags, of course I get the floor dynamics, but I can’t figure out how to reverse it, or make the pieces vibrate for that matter.

For now I’m thinking I may have to use dynamics for the shatter, render that and then play it backwards in After Effects for the final scene, But I’m really hoping there is a way to do this in C4D. I also want some sort of camera move while the pieces are coming together to form the word, and it would be much easier if i don’t have to plan the camera move backwards..

Can anyone suggest an elegant solution for this?

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8core MacPro, 3.0 GHZ, 10GB RAM, OSX 10.5.6

AE CS3
FCP 6.0.1

[Jeremy Allen]

ok, so going with the “backwards” solution, I’ve figured out how to vibrate the pieces by keyframing a vibrate tag after the pieces have settled. This way, when I play it backwards, the pieces will start to vibrate and then start to slide towards forming the word.

So far so good, but one other thing I can’t figure out. I don’t really want the initial “burst” of the fracture object. I would rather the pieces just fall onto the floor instead of exploding out and then falling. With exploding pieces, it looks a little weird played backwards because the pieces kinda fly back into place instead of “crawling” up the letters and into place, if that makes sense.

So is there any way to use the fracture object so that the pieces just react naturally to the gravity dynamics instead of exploding first?

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8core MacPro, 3.0 GHZ, 10GB RAM, OSX 10.5.6

AE CS3
FCP 6.0.1

[Steve Blacker]

Fracture object would work for that – you have to cut up your text or use the Destruction plugin to do it. Check out a recent tutorial on greyscalegorilla.com on how to shatter objects using the fracture object in C4D, as well as some info on the (free) Destruction plugin. If you’re on a PC, I’m not sure the Destruction plugin will work – you can manually slice up your text with the knife tol. If you look in the tutorials section here on Creative Cow there’s a recent tutorial on how to do that.

It’s only work if you’d rather be doing something else…

[Jeremy Allen]

Hey Steve,
Thanks for your time and response.. The tutorials at GSG and the Cow are what got me thinking about this in the first place. I’ve used Destruction for the cutting up and let me tell you, that was a long painful process. It’s very buggy and crashes with almost every cut. It works great for a simple cube, but anything more complex and C4D just gives up. It literally took me several hours to cut up 4 words the way I wanted. I’m not knocking the plugin by any means. I realize its just a beta and I think it will be great once the kinks are worked out. The other method of knifing the text is good too, but then I think you lose the ability to control the extrusion caps. By relying on the explosion FX for the depth, you end up with just plain square caps.

Anyway, the major problem I’m still trying to figure out is the initial “exploding” of the fracture object. I’ve figured out that any objects touching each other will burst outwards. The more they overlap, the more powerful the burst. So I used the separation feature in Destruction, but I still get a slight burst at the start of the dynamics. I feel like I’ve been through every setting in the Fracture object and rigid body tags, but can’t seem to control that intial burst. The closest I can get is by using the custom initial velocity with a high negative Z number. This way the pieces fall straight down. But it happens with a lot of force, and it doesn’t look very natural.

So if you have any suggestions on how to control that inital burst, I’d be happy to hear it! Thanks again.

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8core MacPro, 3.0 GHZ, 10GB RAM, OSX 10.5.6

AE CS3
FCP 6.0.1

[Jeremy Allen]

Well now it seems I have another problem. I’ve got my 4 words cut up and placed, but when I add the fracture object, I get the spinny beach ball of death (on a Mac). This isn’t a very complicated scene. I have a sky object for lighting and a floor with a bit of reflection, and the 4 words.. that’s it.

Being new to C4D, I don’t really know the best way to handle this. Is there a “most efficient” way to use shatter on multiple objects? There seem to be several possibilites:

1. Put all 4 words in a null and parent the Fracture object to the null.
2. Connect all 4 words into one object, Parent the Fracture object.
3. Keep the words as separate objects and parent a Fracture to each word.
4. Make each word a separate child of one Fracture object.

right now I’m using #4 and I get the spinny wheel for a while before C4D reacts to any mouse clicks. At this pace its nearly impossible to get anything done.

Can anyone help with this problem? Please don’t tell me this is too much for C4D to handle…

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8core MacPro, 3.0 GHZ, 10GB RAM, OSX 10.5.6

AE CS3
FCP 6.0.1