RBD fracture to cloth - Breaking ash

[loudsubs]

I came across this video the other night, and thought it had some really cool effects. It's done in 3DSMax. I'm trying to work out how I would approach this in Houdini.  Right around 23:00 - 24:00 in the video he has some playblasts of what looks like an RBD sim turning into cloth, which continues to fracture after the initial hit.  There are obviously multiple layers in there with the particles etc, but the part I'm interested in is the continuous fracture of something that has weight and mass, but seamlessly turns in cloth/ash.  

I think I would first try to do this with all RBD, and cheating gravity after the initial hit, not sure if that would give the right feel though, of lifeless ash blowing away in the wind.   I am also curious about the idea of turning a fractured RBD into cloth, in order to get some nice bendy behavior as it turns weightless and blows away in the wind.  But since the thing continues to fracture, things get complicated.  What do you guys think?

 

[Farmfield]

Replicating TP's volume breaker in Houdini - without it becoming very heavy - is tricky, to say the least. I haven't dug into it that deep, but the tests I've done with recursive fracturing so far has turned out very, very heavy, pretty quickly. TP's volume breaker is ridiculously efficient.

So yeah, as much as I love Houdini and I have no interest whatsoever to go back to Max, I miss TP, damn, I miss it. 

Edited October 16, 2016 by Farmfield