[Update] Perfect Parking Spot – Shot 6-7: Destruction detailing (Patreon)

Finished up detail work for the all important footprint craters, along with some simulation and animation for the vehicles Rog flattened, ahead of the last big bit of destruction fx-work this animation requires.

Static Destruction Detailing

Most of the work for this one was doing the detailing, so I thought I'd show one of the main methods I used for that. For this example I want the upper floors of this building to have remained intact while surrounded by a pile of rubble made up of the lower floors:

First I separated the mesh into upper and lower sections. I sunk the upper section into a mound of dirt made from a subdivided plane, to act as the foundation I wanted to build the rest of the detailing on top of. Then I took the lower section and split it into large chunks, adding some wear and tear using the One Click Damage (OCD) addon for Blender):

Next I used rigid body physics to dump the large chunks into a pile around the sunken building (using the building and dirt mound as colliders). Since you don't see the back from this angle I've also added chunks from that wall to the front pile as well:

Once I was happy with the placement I applied all the transformations and edited the dirt mound to better fill the gaps between the chunks, then I used a geometry node setup to scatter small bits of debris on top of both. To make that debris I took a simple cube and a cuboid, textured them and then cell fractured them into pieces (along with adding wear and tear with the OCD addon again):

The last step was to add a layer of dirt on top of the large chunks. To do this I made a new version of it's wall material which mixes dirt on top of the brick but only on polygons that are facing directly upwards (i.e. have positive z normals):

And with that it's all done. There's still more I could add to this, like making another version of the brick material with cracks or missing bricks for the upper section, but variations on this method are how I handle most destruction detailing. Start with the bigger chunks, fill in the gaps between with simple dirt meshes, and then layer on lots of smaller details procedurally using geometry nodes and custom shaders.

Squashing cars (and peeling them off again)

Next big thing for this scene was all the vehicles Rog flattened; I wanted some to remain on the ground, some to have stuck to his foot and some to peel off and come crashing down as he steps out of the crater.

Originally I was hand-sculpting crushed versions but I eventually decided to go for a more procedural approach instead. First I was doing this through a set of modifiers on each object, but then I took all that and combined it into one geometry node setup for crushing cars (and other things too):

It basically shrinks the mesh down on the z axis to flatten it, then uses two noise textures with different scales to displace various sized dents and bumps in the mesh. Then I left the scale, intensity and location of these textures modifiable from the outside so that they can be changed per object to further break up any repetition.

For the flattened cars that fall off his sole I used physic simulation for the animations, with simple box colliders (to avoid complications from the crumpled mesh). Once I'd baked the simulations to keyframes I parented lattices to each car and then used the lattice modifier to animate them peeling off and changing shape as they fell:

After that I did some extra animation and physic simulation for various bits of the cars reacting and falling off too.

What's coming up next

The last big bit of destruction simulation that I need to do is this partially destroyed building (highlighted in red) getting smashed as Rog's foot passes through it:

So next update will focus on doing the simulation and fx-work for that, along with any remaining fx stuff like bits of dirt and debris falling from Rog's sole. Depending on how quickly that goes I may also include smoke simulation in the next update as well (I'll have to see how it goes).

In terms of rendering these shots, I'm planning on packing 5, 6 and 7 together (due to their interconnectivity) so I won't be getting round to it until all three of them are finished up.