Simple Shattering in ICE

The Create Basic Shatter from Point Cloud compound illustrates one possible way to use ICE modeling to break up polygon meshes. It works only with convex meshes, but you can use it as an example for building more complex shattering effects. It involves three main elements:

• A polygon mesh to shatter.
• An empty mesh to contain the shattered topology.
• A point cloud to define the centers of the Voronoi cells.
• Optionally, another mesh to use as an emitter for the point cloud, if you don't want to shatter evenly through the original mesh.

1. Create a convex polygon mesh to shatter, and hide it.

2. Get an empty point cloud, and create a non-simulated ICE tree on it.

3. Connect Build Slice Planes to the ICETree root

4. Choose the mesh to use as the particle emitter mesh, and connect its name into the Polymesh Name port.

   • If you want to shatter evenly throughout the volume of the original mesh, use it.
   • If you want to shatter a smaller, more localized region, you can create and use a different mesh to control it.
   • If you want to shatter just in one plane, you can use a grid or disk and deactivate Emit From Volume.

5. Adjust the Particle Emitter Settings as desired, and set a small non-zero value for Inset Factor.

   

6. Get an empty polygon mesh, and create a non-simulated ICE tree on it.

7. Connect Create Basic Shatter from Point Cloud to the ICETree root. Connect the mesh that you want to shatter into Polygon Mesh Name and connect the point cloud into Point Cloud Name.

   

8. If desired, you can also connect Set Data from Chunk. It sets an integer per vertex that identifies which chunk each vertex belongs to, so that you can distinguish the chunks for further processing in your tree. It also sets a random color per chunk which you can use to distinguish the chunks in the viewports by using the color in the render tree.

   

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