The Undeclared Variable

This week we announce the new feature to Fracture, Split Plane. The split plane utilizes a plane node (similar to our crack image plane) to control the orientation and position of a split on a mesh. These nodes can be interactively manipulated while the effected mesh updates in the viewport.

You can watch the video demo here or keep reading if you rather not listen to me drone on.

Split Plane Demonstration | r2040 - EC from Fracture on Vimeo.

Example:

A simple cube with a default split plane.

Increasing repetitions will increase the number of planes. Fracture can also have randomized seeds to quickly generate randomized crack patterns.

The exterior of the mesh.

A cube fractured from split plane (vastly different from voronoi shards).

Increasing the grid detail can provide a simpler internal meshing for testing out simulations or create more details for finalizing a shot.

Users also have a control of the amplitude and wavelength of the noise which directly effects the internal meshing.

Localizing the effect:

Using existing features, like paint localize, we can control the range of the effect split plane has on a mesh. I start with a default setup on another cube.

Using Maya Artisan tools I paint on the upper right portion of the cube.

Upon exiting the paint tool the fracturing updates almost immediately.

Another view of the cube shows that the plane does not effect the entire cube now.

Video demonstration:

Split Plane Demonstration 2 | r2040 - EC from Fracture on Vimeo.

We're getting there, one feature at a time.

Fracture FX Homepage

- Ed