"Cutting" a prop

fjolasolveig

Hello there everyone.

I am trying to make some sort of apocalyptic scenario, in which some kind of attack is happening in a city. I would like to create an effect in which there is an impact against a building and, as a result, part of it falls down.

I am not very familiar with technical stuff, pretty much I just use Daz as a hobby tool, to create some simple images... Is there any way at all to achieve this in the software or ANY other way of doing it?

Just to say, I was thinking of using one of the buildings from Urban Sprawl 3.

Thanks in advance for any suggestion!

sriesch

Unless you can find a pre-built model designed for this, you are going to have to fake it the hard way.  How you do it will depend on what you want to achieve and what you have available.  If it's something tiny in the distance it will be easier, if it's filling the entire screen it will be a lot harder. 

There are some pre-collapsed buildings already available, but it sounds like you are looking for an action scene, in which case you will need to do things like create/find/fake all the individual pieces, any cloud of dust from broken mortar or other things, etc.  You might be able to use a deformer or the geometry editor to bend/hide parts of the building, then use other models or primitives for all the individual pieces, either creating or borrowing the material from the building you are working with.  Of course the building will probably not be designed for this so you will probably also have to create all the individual interior portions of the building that may now be visible, along with the broken edge that should be thicker than a single plane.

fjolasolveig

The problem is that I want to make a sequence of images... I have the Urban Sprawl 3, looking all good and nice, then I want a particular building (one of the tall skyscrapers) to be hit by some sort of object and consequently be split in two and then crumble. The crumbling is ok, I have a fair knowledge of photoshop and I plan to use Ron's explosion layers to give me the effect I am looking for along with some other rubble props in Daz itself... I just need some idea to actually make a part of the building be completely "ripped off" from its base, like, for example, if the object hitting it would be so massive to cut it in two parts.

Will a Dformer work in this case? Like, crating a copy of the building and then dform both?

sriesch

some items that might be useful:

https://www.daz3d.com/brick-in-the-wall

https://www.daz3d.com/urban-ruins

https://www.daz3d.com/ruins-of-war

https://www.daz3d.com/rubble

https://www.daz3d.com/rubble-2-modern-ruins

https://www.daz3d.com/rubble-3-modern-ruins

https://www.daz3d.com/city-ruins-building-02

https://www.daz3d.com/city-ruins-building-01

To select individual polygons and create a new surface so you can make it invisible in DAZ Studio: Tools > "Geometry  Editor".  In the viewport, click on one poly to select it then hold Ctrl down and select any other polygons you want (or optionally you can right-click, Geometry > "selection mode" and select with a rectangle (marquee) or by freehand drawing (lasso)). To remove a polygon from a group of selected polygons, ALT key and Left Mouse.  Right click and choose Geometry Assignment > Create Surface from Selected.  Give the new surface a name. You will then see a new material zone in the "Surfaces (color)" pane. You can set it to 0% opacity to make it permanently hidden. 

sriesch

Animation will make it much more challenging.

For the separation, you would probably just want two copies of the same building, one with the top part hidden and the other with the bottom part hidden, so you can move them away from each other.  A dformer won't help in this case I don't think.

 

fjolasolveig

Thank you so much, this really helped a whole lot! I am going to experiment a bit and see what I can come up with!

chris-2599934

I think I'd make two copies of the building in question - one for the bottom and one for the top, then use the geometry editor to make the relevant parts of each invisible. Place the two halves as you want them, then use the rubble products already listed and a lot of photoshop to dress them up.

Mind you, the sad experience of 9-11 tells us that that's not what really happens when a skyscraper is hit by something - you don't end up with two neat halves, you just get a big heap of rubble.

BlueSirius

Hexagon integrates with Daz pretty well in terms of exporting objects editing them and reimporting. Its a reasonably low priced modeller with a bridge to Daz.

You can send objects to that and for instance  cut them apart and make new objects. Then port them to daz.

Suppose you wanted to crumple the building. You could deform it with some exageration in Hexagon then export it back to Daz as a morph and then before using the broken up model start to slide the deformation morph into effect.

 

kaotkbliss

What I did in these 2 images is

I sent Urban Future 1 to hexagon to make my wall section from

In Daz Studio, I used geometry editor to remove the section of wall that was going to be affected

In Hexagon, I removed all of the model except the part I removed in Daz Studio

I then used Hexagon to split each polygon into many smaller polygons and sent it back to Daz studio

Finally I used a dformer to indent the wall section and added an image of cracks as a layer to the texture

Added some rubble around the bottom and some smoke for effect...

 

*edit*

Sorry the images are so dark, my monitor at home is so much brighter (even after resetting every setting everywhere I can back to default)

dHandle

I have been experimenting with fragmenting DAZ models in Rayfire, a plugin for 3DS max and Maya, (and maybe a coupel others).

Check my thread in the Art Forum for examples.  Might be similar to what your looking for.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/186216/testing-tap-tap-tap-is-this-thing-working/p1