Thinkinetic has posted a breakdown with some questions and answers from Guillaume Hoffmann, who was able to create a violent breaking of a bed using PullDownIt, as if it were possessed by something.
The biggest challenge was to make two solvers interact that didn’t understand each other
This is pretty interesting as there are a lot of things that have to come together to create a simulation like this. From switching out animated models for dynamic ones during the shot, and also the logistics of having cloth simulation to interact with the rigid body simulations of the bed.
The rigid body stuff was all handled by PullDownIt of course, where Guillaume used PullDownIt 2.5 for most of the breaking and destruction of the bed. There were also a few pieces that used Maya’s PhysX, mostly as a tweak.
For the upper parts of the bed that break, Guillaume used a script he create that turns kinematic objects into dynamic ones at any given frame; Also preserving the velocity of the initial animation.
Guillaume notes that the main challenge was to create the succession of events as if they happened seamlessly. Also working with multiple solvers was not without its trickery. The rigid body stuff had to interact with the cloth which was being handled by Maya’s nCloth solver. In the end, Guillaume was able to get a very convincing shot. To check out the Q&A for Creating a Possessed Bed with PullDownIt for maya, check the post here: POSSESSED BED by Guillaume Hoffmann.
About PulldownIt
PullDownIt is Thinkinetic’s dynamics solver for Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max that will allow you to create destruction ranging from fractures to massive rigid body simulations. You can learn more about PullDownIt for Maya and 3ds Max here.
