spaceship crash

[ioness]

Hi, 

I need to create a crash scene of a spaceship for my school VFX movie. I'm stucked at creating the ground deformation. I get some nice deformations using grains object but I don't know if I can convert it to a geometry with a texture (it will be finally composited with the live plate). I've already tried to convert it to a VDB and then to a polygonal mesh but it doesn't give me good results.

I also thought of using a cloth object for the ground, adding in compositing the stacking effect made for the front but I don't know how to handle cloth object (already did some test which were not very good ).

Is there any other way to handle this kind of shot?

 

I'm aiming to create a shot kinda like the plane crash scene in this video: 

 

Here is the scene file (I can't put the original spaceship as it's too heavy)

crash_scene.hip

[Atom]

For ground deformations check out the Master Class H13 Bullet solver around 54:40 minutes. Download the example files and take a look. Basically you pre-fracture the ground and hook it together with spring constraints. When the impact occurs the springs will stretch and eventually break. However, instead of breaking them convert them into strong Glue bonds which prevent further deformation. This way the impact punches in a little and the ground pieces dent inward.

Edited March 9, 2016 by Atom

[ioness]

Thx Atom, I'll take a look at it tommorow as I don't have Houdini in front of me right now

 

 

edit:

Thx a lot Atom, it's wotking. I'll upload a playbast as soon as I get good results after tweaking.

Edited March 10, 2016 by ioness