C4D: Realistic Wall Destruction With Dust Effects

Creating nice effects with Modynamics is pretty easy with Cinema 4D’s new tools. However, to be able to create a realistic smashing effect, it’s not enough to just break the wall into pieces, we need more then that to make it believable. So in this tutorial we’ll cover using Modynamics along with particles to create this effect. We’ll employ an emitter object to easily create our particles, and then use some supplementary tools to control the effect, creating a neat, realistic animation of our wall being destroyed.

Step 1

To start, create a floor object.

Step 2

Now create a “Cube” and  then check on the “Fillet” option, and give it the values 1 and 5 respectively.

Step 3

Create a new “Cloner Object”, then drag and drop the Cube object onto it, to make the Cube a child of the Cloner object.

Step 4

In “Linear Mode” try the X,Y,Z axes to find the correct one. We need one axis to align the cloned boxes to the Floor surface  (The Z axis was the correct one for me) but may be different for you, so try each one separately until you find the correct one. Then increase the “Count” number arbitrarily.

Step 5

Select the “Cloner Object” and make it editable, by pressing the button shown below.

Step 6

Copy and paste that editable Cloner Object cluster, and place it on top of the original one. Then select both of the Cloner Object clusters, and press Alt + G on keyboard to group them.

Step 7

Now create another “Cloner Object” and drop the grouped objects onto it. Make it look like a wall by playing with settings of Cloner Object, as we did previously.

Step 8

Now select the last Cloner Object you created, right click and go to Mograph Tags>Rigid Body to add that tag.

Step 9

Assign the same tag to the Floor object we created at the very beginning. Then select the one we assigned to the Cloner Object. Under the “Collision” tab, change the “Trigger” setting to On collision, instead of Immediately.

Step 10

Now create a “Sphere” to use as a cannon ball. Then create a “Fracture Object” and make the Sphere a child of it by dragging and dropping as before.

Step 11

Now again, assign a “Rigid Body” tag and click on it to access the Attributes. Under the “Dynamics” tab, check the “Custom Initial Velocity” box. There are three boxes for “Initial Linear Velocity”, (according to your axis, one will accelerate the ball towards the wall.) So try each of them, one by one to find the correct one. (In the first box -2000 cm worked for me). I’ve used -2.000, but you can determine the speed by changing the value. If you wish you can also set values for “Initial Angular Velocity” which will basically makes the ball rotate around itself.

Step 12

Now create an “Environment” Object.

Step 13

Also create a “PyroCluster – Volume Tracer” by flowing the menus shown. Then drag & drop it onto the “Environment” Object.

Step 14

Now create an “Emitter” and place it somewhere right behind the wall. Also re-size it and turn it according to the direction of the wall and let it emit particles against the wall. You can play the animation by pressing the yellow button under the time-line to see which way particles go.

Step 15

By pressing the G key on your keyboard, play through the animation frame by frame (the fifth button on the animation control panel does the same thing.) By doing this, find the frame where the ball contacts the wall (in my scene it’s on the 11th frame.) So in the “Emitter” object’s attributes window, under the “Particle” tab, I changed the “Start Emission” setting to 11 and added 10 additional frames to the “Stop Emission” section (which is 21.) I also set the “Birthrate renderer” to 1.000 as well. If you wish you can change the “Birthrate Editor” to see it in the viewport while previewing. These values may vary according to your scene, distance between the wall and ball, size of the blocks in the wall etc.

Step 16

Now we are going to create a PyroCluster in order to make these particles look like a dust cloud. First of all, follow the menus I’ve shown, and add a “PyroCluster”.

Step 17

Double click on it to access the settings window. Let’s start with the “Globals” section. Here change the “Render Mode” to VideoPost and decrease the “Density” amount to 3. Then create a gradient color similar to mine if possible.

Step 18

Now jump to the “Noise” section. Here change the “Regularity” to 99%, the “Scale” to 1091%, the “Peak Blend” to 113%, the “Detail” to 2.94 and finally the “Phase” to 419% respectively.

Step 19

Now assign the “PyroCluster” to the “Emitter Object”, by dragging & dropping.

Step 20

Now we are going to control the particles in order to get a realistic and dynamic dust cloud. Start by adding a “Wind Object”.

Step 21

Rotate it approximately 32 degree towards the wall.

Step 22

Select the Rigid body tags of both the Cannon ball and the wall (which are set as children of the Fracture object and the Cloner object.) After selecting these tags, go to the “Force” tab (under attributes) and drag and drop the “Wind object” onto the “Force list” area. The “Force Mode” should be set to Excluded already, if not, switch it to Excluded.

Step 23

Add a “Gravity” object to the scene (it’s position doesn’t matter, so just add it and leave it were it is.) However, be sure to change it’s “Acceleration” value to 50, instead of 250.

Step 24

Now switch to the “Animation Layout”.

Step 25

Select the “Wind” object and change its speed to 15.

Step 26

Now play the animation while watching it from a side-view,  find the frame where all the particles emitted come together. (Roughly this is the 39th frame in my scene.)

Step 27

At that point (when the indicator is on the 39th frame), click the little yellow dot for the “Wind speed” (while pressing and holding the CTRL key on your keyboard.) You’ll see it change to a red dot,  a blue rectangle will also appear on the key mode section of time-line.

Step 28

Now go to say, the 54th frame and this time set the “Wind Speed” to 0, again add another rectangle by following the previous process. All these keyframe values may be difference depending to your scene, as I stated on the previous values. So to get the best result, don’t hesitate to trying different values.

Step 29

Now add a “Spot” light and place it as shown;

Step 30

Now go to the “Render Settings” window (CTRL+B) and add “Global Illumination”. No need to go into detail about the settings, just leave it as is. Change the “Anti-Aliasing” to Best, as final touch.

Step 31

Add materials to your bricks, surface and cannon ball. Now your scene is ready to render. To save it as an animation, again go into the “Render Settings” window and select the “output” section. Select a resolution by changing the “preset”. Your animation will be rendered From 0 to whichever frame you choose, so set the frame number in the “To” field to where you want to stop your animation. Now go to the “Save” section and select a folder for your file to be saved. Also choose a  format, such as “Quicktime Movie”.

Step 32

And here is our final result.

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