Alien Drone Attack

In The Making


March 7, 2025


Week 05: Ground Destruction - Debris and Particles

Refining the ground destruction by adding debris and particles has been one of my favorite parts of this project. In this breakdown, I will walk you through the process of setting up the debris emitter, instancing geometry, and configuring a Popnet for particle simulation.

I. Debris and Particles Sourcing

I started by extracting the inner faces from two previously set up fracture configurations. Next, I scattered a copious number of points, setting the stage for the mathematical magic to come.

According to the shared by Gabriel Neville, an FX Lead at MPC FILM, the method of sourcing points for debris emission is demonstrated below:

II. Debris instancing

Once I successfully set up the sourcing, I instanced various debris geometries onto the points. Since each point has its own pscale and orient attributes, the instanced debris naturally varies in appearance. After defining the velocity, I ran another Rigid Body Dynamics simulation for the debris, using the drone and the main concrete destruction as colliders. To optimize performance, all debris pieces use simple box colliders, significantly speeding up the simulation.

Debris Sourcing

Debris RBD Simulation

II. Particle Simulation

Particles are great substitution for tiny pieces that falling out from the destruction, adding another layer for the effect without increasing the amount of geometry

Particles Sourcing

Particles Simulation

References

Links of references & assets:

Ground Impact in Houdini Tutorial (Part 2) - Fine Debris - REBELWAY

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Week 04: Destruction Week 03

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Week 06: Dust and Helicopter Destruction Test