Shatter Options

Use these options to set the behavior and appearance of your surface shatter, solid shatter, or crack shatter effect.

Post Operation

The Post Operation options determine what kind of shard you create. The options vary slightly according to the type of shatter you have selected. Select one of the following from the pop-up menu:

shapes

Breaks the object into shapes called shards. Once the object has been broken into shapes, you can apply any type of animation to the shards, such as keyframing. If you plan to animate the shards using Dynamic forces, you might want to use the rigid body or soft body post operation options.

cracks on surface

Applies to Crack Shatter effects. Creates crack lines without actually breaking the object. You can use this option to quickly find crack patterns you like, then repeat the crack shatter using the desired post operation option.

To do this, you pick the same vertex each time while changing the Seed Value to values greater than 0. To repeat the same cracks, set the Seed Value to the same value it was for the desired cracks, and pick the same vertex.

rigid bodies with collisions off

Breaks the object into rigid bodies. Collisions are turned off to prevent interpenetration errors from occurring while the shards are touching. You can apply dynamic forces to move the shards, and turn collisions on when the shards are no longer touching (see Connect shards to fields).

For complete information on effects you can create with rigid bodies, see Maya Classic Dynamics.

soft bodies with goals

Breaks the object into soft bodies, which deform when you apply dynamic forces. The software also adds goal objects, which are copies of the shards that you can use to more precisely control the soft body deformations. A goal weight of 1 forces your shards to maintain their original shape. See Maya Classic Dynamics for more information. Springs are also created, which add internal structure to the soft bodies and improve your control over the deformation.

For complete information on effects you can create with soft bodies, see Maya Classic Dynamics. For complete information on effects you can create with goals, see Goals. For complete information on springs, see Springs.

soft bodies with lattice and goals

Breaks the object into shards. The software adds a lattice deformer to each shard and makes the lattices soft bodies. When lattices are soft bodies, they can be affected by fields. The lattices deform the shards according to the fields affecting the lattices.

Goal objects are also added, which are copies of the lattices that you can use to more precisely control the soft body deformations. A goal weight of 1 forces your lattices to maintain their original shape. See Set goal weights on soft-body shards for more information. In addition, springs are added to the lattices, which add internal structure to the lattices and improve your control over the deformation.

Using lattices to deform your shards can be faster, especially if you have complex geometry. It’s also easier to add springs to lattices, creating a more uniform jiggliness. However, it you want the shards to collide, you may get unrealistic results because the collisions occur between the lattices, not the shards.

Sets

Applies to Surface Shatter and Crack Shatter effects. Puts the individual faces that make up the shard into sets called surfaceShatter#Shard#. When you choose the Sets option, Maya doesn’t actually break up the object; it merely puts the polygons of each shard into sets.

You can use these sets as you would any other set in Maya. For example, you can assign different colors to the sets (see Assign shaders to sets).

Remove interior polygons

Applies to Solid Shatter effects. Removes the polygons in the interior of the object. When you turn on the Remove Interior Polygons option, the Extrude Shards option becomes available so you can extrude the shards.

Triangulate surface

Triangulates the entire surface. Turn on Triangulate Surface to create planar polygons.

Smooth Shards

Applies to Surface Shatter effects. Redistributes the polygons among the shards so the shards have smoother edges. Turning on this option results in more processing time.

Apply interior material

Applies to Solid Shatter effects. Creates a new default material called shatterinteriorSG# and applies this shader to the inside surfaces of the shards. The exterior already has the default initialShadingGroup or whatever shader you had on the original object applied to it.

You can use the HyperShade window to edit the material. This option lets you have different shaders on the inside surfaces and outside surfaces of your shards.

Original Surface

Specifies what happens to the original object. You can select:

Nothing: Leaves the original object.
Hide: Hides the original object.
Delete: Deletes the original.

Link To Shards

Creates several connections from the original surface to the shards. This option lets you control the visibility of the original surface and the shards with one attribute on the original surface’s transform node.

See Link original surface to shards for more information.

Make Original Surface Rigid

Makes the original object an active rigid body. This option is available only when you have selected rigid bodies as the post operation and turned on Link to Shards. See Link original surface to shards for more information.

Verbose Mode

Displays messages in the Command Feedback window.

Shatter Options

Post Operation

Original Surface

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