[Brian Jones]

put a alpha texture on the object then either go to Render Settings/Sketch and Toon/Shading and turn Object to Off or if you want some normal S&T and some alpha S&T put a Sketch Render Tag on the object and go to Shading there and turn Object to Off

That works if you are using an image (or any kind of texture) on an object – you get the normal texture plus the S&T lines

[Brian Jones]

explosions are too much energy in the settings – or you are encountering unstable solutions
— From the Help “The classic Soft Body variation with the 3 Spring types mentioned above tends to lose its initial overall shape because each object point’s Spring only “sees” its direct neighbor. The Stiffness values can be increased dramatically but this would result in the simulation becoming correspondingly unstable, which would in turn have to be compensated for by increasing the Steps per Frame value, resulting in higher memory requirements.”

that’s just one example talking about Shape Conservation and the help has a number of places where it talks about pushing a setting to far will result in unstable dynamics, so *maybe* increasing Steps Per Frame will help but not necessarily – it would depend on how it’s set up and what settings you are using.

[Brian Jones]

since the dynamics, once set up, will always collide at the same frame you can make it work but if you are thinking to possibly change the dynamics and have the collapse adjust automatically I don’t know that it can be done.
Sounds like it might be possible when R18 arrives with the new Voronoi Fracture object https://www.maxon.net/en/products/new-in-release-18/mograph/

[Brian Jones]

Thrausi creates a bunch of new objects but your character started as one object (probably?) The usual thought would be to pick the point in the animation where the break up occurs, do a Current State to Object on the character at that point, Thrausi that new object then swap (visibility probably) the animated character for the Thrausied parts at that point in the animation.

[Brian Jones]

also possible via the FlipFlop node

10462_collissionreplacementtest2.c4d.zip

[Brian Jones]

a bunch of cubes cloned along a spline to start with?

[Brian Jones]

Can I see the scene file (or a simple example setup)?

[Brian Jones]

which particles? TP or X? Guessing TP, easiest way is usually to change the group on collision then the change is permanent and doesn’t rely on continuing contact

[Brian Jones]

had another thought, don’t know what kind of motion you want but to me the Displacer deformer would give better motion (more controllable anyway). The problem is controlling whether the roots are affected. Here’s a simple example with the Displacer with a linear falloff on the smallest chunk of hair for a test.

10450_splinehairdisplacementanimation2.c4d.zip

[Brian Jones]

Using a Subdivision Surface (HyperNurb in R12) is the way to go and keeping the underlying mesh as simple as possible is the way to go.
I made the main body from a cylinder (no caps) with 1 Height Segment – 20 Rotation segments (if the fins need to be thinner use more segments) and spun the body 9° (360/20/2) so the side polys would be pointing directly sideways (at the engines, simpler later on).
Added cuts with the knife in Loop mode, as few cuts as possible, and sized them to make the shape, up near the top more to get the changing slope, fewer in the middle but there *have* to be cuts (with the SubD/HNurb off) at the top and bottom of the connections between the body and engines. The HNurb has to off when making the cuts for the connections because even though the cuts appear to be in different places with it on once you connect the engines and turn the HNurb back on the resulting connection is where it should be.
Copied the body to make one engine, scaled down, made a few changes since the top is shaped differently, copied that to make the other engine then selected the polys on the main body – noticed that would be two polys on the engines and one on the body so went to body and made a cut around the body to make it two polys too (makes the connection better).
Connected all the parts into one mesh (Connect Objects) selected the polys to which would make the connection and did a Bridge between each engine and the body). Then to make the connections more aerodynamic made a cut halfway along the connection and scaled points at the bottom of the resulting loop closer so the bottom of the connection is thinner.

10449_rocket2.c4d.zip