shell of ice explode - question - how to?

[themaxxer]

hello all

I have a job where a sprinter starts (photo) and I should make a shell of ice on him exploding when he starts...! I have to make an image, not an animation.
the photographer wants to get 3 stages of the explosion as rendering.
1. image where the ice shell is at one piece
2. image where the explosion starts
3. image where the pieces of ice are exploding more

I have decided to make the model of the sprinter with daz and export it to max. then making the shell with volumebreaker from cebas. so far so good, but whats the best, and most flexible way to make the explosion?
I am given to try with PFlow, but I don't know how to setup. very bad! my co-worker wants to make it with massfx, but I think it's not as flexible it should be.

does anybody has an idea or better ways to do it?

thanks guys and I hope I can help somebody too.

best regards
themaxxer

[instinct]

The easiest way would probably be using Rayfire tool. It's not free, but definitely the easiest way to set up and will give you the most control and probably best result.

You can also set up something like that using pflow. Check out Bobo's "Custom Chunks" example

Kind regards,
Thorsten

[themaxxer]

thanks thorsten. I have bought rayfire tool. it looks promising it's very flexible.

the bobo script is also working, but I can't use the character as source to get an explosion initiating from its normals... do you understand what I mean?

best regards
themaxxer

[joconnell]

For starters load up your particles using a birth script and then use a speed by surface op picking an underlying copy of the person geo? I'd look at a workflow like this:

Import daz model and pose it to line up with your photo of the real person that's underneath the ice.
Duplicate the person and add a shell to generate the thickness for your ice.
Put the shelled copy of the person through rayfire's fragmenter to get your chunks.
Open pflow and load in your chunks using bobo's script in a first event.
Send out all of the particles to the next event which contains a speed by surface operator set to "out from surface" with your original, non-shelled model picked.
Try and mesh these particles or use one of the particle flow baker scripts to convert the system to animated geometry.
Model some simple low res shards of ice.
Pick this system as a position object in a new pflow system and use a spawn trails event set to spawn by distance travelled, and emit more small random particles using your low res shards. deally emit these from the edges of your baked pflow only for accuracy, and let them inherit maybe 50 / 60 percent of the paren't speed.

Should do nicely!

[themaxxer]

thanks joconnell

you have helped me a lot since I am joining this forum. really nice and I appreciate that very much!

I will try your workflow and tell you what I got.

best regards
themaxxer

[joconnell]

More than welcome - there's a tonne of far more talented people that've helped me out over the years so glad to pay a bit back!

[glyph]

would really love to see some of the end results!
did an exploding ice thing years ago (pre-vray) that really wasn't too bad
(was an igloo that exploded, not a person!)

[themaxxer]

The easiest way would probably be using Rayfire tool. It's not free, but definitely the easiest way to set up and will give you the most control and probably best result.

I have bought rayfire tool. great piece of software. but I stuck with the setup. the problem is the pieces are falling down as soon I simulating. can this be stopped? I want to place the bombs and when I simulate the model should explode without falling down first.

any ideas how to setup? help is much appreciated.

best regards
themaxxer

[joconnell]

For starters the pieces have no momentum of movement being brought in to the simulation so gravity is the first force being applied and thus they fall straight down. Depending on how you want the ice to shatter shape wise you'll have to add in some forces or colliding objects to drive the movement of the fragments. One easy way might be to take your original daz model, put a push operator on it with a negative value so it shrinks back in, and then over two frames animate the push to shove outwards through the fragments. If you pick this as a collision object with rayfire, it should make the mesh push the fragments away from the surface of your model and look like it's bursting through the ice. The speed by surface approach in pflow would achieve something similar too.