Crumpling/ crushing objects

[daforum]

Hi folks,

Does anyone know of a tutorial that shows how to crush/ crumple objects for example hitting a wall?

Thanks. :)

[faulknermano]

Personally I've made only generic crushing animation - nothing really accurate. If your requirement is for visual impact, like mine, then my suggestion is to the model the crumpled part into the object using morphs. Then, I'd put a displacement (and bump) on that crumpled part, attenuating the effect using weight maps.

A fancier thoughts is to use cloth dynamics to get some crumpling going. But I reckon that's going to take you a bit longer, and I personally don't have any settings or specific suggestions.

[daforum]

Yes, cloth dynamics will be problematic and time consuming. Morphs will work well. Do you have an example setup using displacement/ bump and weight maps as you suggested so I can take a look?

Thanks for the suggestions on how this could be done.

[faulknermano]

Did a very quick one: two spheres: the first one is driven only by the Crumple procedural and is attenuated by the distance of the a null to the point.

The second sphere is driven by a morph, which is modulated by a Crumple texture, and then is attenuated also by a null's distance to any given vertex. The Crumple texture is there to allow for randomness, while the morph is there so that a specific shape can be hand-built to suit the scene.

EDIT: Though I created a weight map, I didn't use it in this case, because it didn't seem necessary. Weight maps, however, will come handy when you start texturing the object, because it will allow you to mask the areas that are being crumpled from those that are not.

[daforum]

Hey faulknermano, thanks very much for doing this.

I'm in the middle of doing some animation so will take a look after that.

[daforum]

.......still animating!

[faulknermano]

haha.... take your time. :D

[shrox]

I use morph targets and scaling for stuff like that. Like a car hitting a wall. The body is one piece, but each fender and the hood (bonnet) is separate and has a morph target. The glass is separate too, and I often use a combination of displacement maps and scaling to show it breaking and the shards spinning.