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

Finished up the last bit of destruction simulation along with adding in a ton of particles for falling dirt for the last two shots. Now I just need to do smoke for both to wrap up the last bits of simulation-work this animation requires.

Particles simulation for crumbling earth

I haven't really covered much new ground this update, but one aspect I do want to dive into is doing particles simulation for the earth crumbling from Rog's soles. For shot 7 I used the basic Blender particles-on-mesh setup, while for shot 6 I tried to recreate actual clumps of earth coming off and breaking apart.

To start I duplicated the sole of Rog's foot mesh, gave it thickness via a solidify modifier, and then broke it into chunks using cell fracturing. I deleted a bunch of them to save on time and performance (each particle system needs to be done manually per chunk), then parented the remaining ones to the bones of Rog's foot armature so that they roughly followed the movement of his sole. Finally I used rigid body physics on top of that to animate them falling off.

Baking all of that to keyframes provided the base to build the rest of the fx on top.

For particles I used the Molecular Plus addon, a continuation of the older long-running Molecular addon. Blender's standard particle simulation only does collisions against meshes set as colliders, it doesn't do them between particles themselves (whether within a single particle system or between multiples). Molecular Plus on the other hand does both, along with allowing you to link particles together into connected masses which you can also break apart too.

It's an incredibly useful addon, though once you add animation into the mix it becomes a bit more limited. Originally I was hoping to have the clumped particles follow the path of the animated chunks, but particles are either always affected by physics or they aren't. There's no way to switch between those modes dynamically. And while the addon does allow you to indirectly pin particles to a guiding mesh there's no way to keyframe that on and off.

The addon is still in active development, so this might become possible in the future, but for now I had to rely on switching the mesh out for the particle version on frame instead.

I'm fairly happy with the result, though I'd still like to figure out a way to get the clump version to follow the path of the chunks (instead of spawning in on impact). And it's one fx I'd like to experiment with more in future stuff, I can see a lot of possible uses for it in mega/giga/terra scaled destruction.

What's coming up next

Last bit of simulation work this animation needs is smoke for shots 6 and 7. Then doing a bit of animation for the anonymous driver in the green car (since you'll be able to see him through the glass in shots 5-6). So next update will cover smoke simulation and the last remaining non-rendering related tasks.

Update after next will cover rendering and compositing these last three shots (5-7) and it'll probably be the last big update for this animation. After that will be the last bits of clean-up and then audio work.