One of the best things about special effects is making the impossible possible. Of all those crazy things brought to “life” on the big screen a large subcategory involves destroying things. Anything from the end of the world as seen in 2012 to me simply smashing my name (as seen to the left) are possible in 3D animation programs like Maya. Needless to say, this is what we're working on right now in class. Let me tell you, breaking things is fun – however – just like particles, destroying an object in Maya takes a lot of computational power. Of course, one of the really neat things is that an object will never break the same way twice in Maya. Now this might seem problematic, but a clever feature available nowadays is caching. When you finally find just the right breaking sequence, you simply cache is and it's you're for good. Or at least until you find a better sequence. In any event, it's all terribly fun, and terribly complex. Yes, you guessed it, there are LOTS of settings that allow you to get a near infinitely wide set of destruction. That being said, I'm off to work on another tutorial that will simulate breaking into the crust of the plant. I'll let you know how that turns out, stay tuned...
No comments:
Post a Comment