FRACTURING TIPS
- Sammy Lyu
- Aug 5
- 2 min read
This section focuses on fracturing tips for Houdini
As of writing, my Houdini version is 20.5.614
[#1] Use Proxy geometry for fractured RBDS
After fracturing a geometry, you are able to send the proxy geometry into the DOPNET instead of the real geometry to save processing power.
Just make sure the "convex decomposition" option is activated in the RBD material fracture.
[#2] Use RBD Pack SOP to consolidate fracture geometry
After fracturing a geometry, either with Voronoi or RBD material fracture, you should use an RBD pack SOP to consolidate the fracture geometry, proxy, and constraints before caching it to disk. This ensures that the entire fracture data can be transported effectively in one tidy package.
[#3] Creating fracture points from CURVE SOP
After fracturing a geometry, either with Voronoi or RBD material fracture, you should use an RBD pack SOP to consolidate the fracture geometry, proxy, and constraints before caching it to disk. This ensures that the entire fracture data can be transported effectively in one tidy package.
[#4] Using "detriangulate" with fractures
Similar to the remesh SOP, sometimes a fracture will create triangle polygons, and that could cause trouble for some types of geometry. To work around this, the "detriangulate" option in SOPs like RBDmaterialfracture can convert the triangulated polygons back to an n-gon (four-sided polygon) for output.
[#5] Use the "CURVE" SOP to create fracture points
Instead of using pointsfromvolume or attribute paint to create areas to scatter points on a geometry for fracturing, a great way to create points for a custom area of a geoemetry is to draw with the CURVE sop, the area you want your points to be and use scatter to create those points.
[#6] Use "CONNECT ADJACENT PIECES" to create constraints from fractures
The connect adjacent pieces SOP can also create constraints for a fractured geometry, in the case that you do not want to use the constraints created by the RBDmaterial fracture, this way of generating constraints can be beneficial, depending on the type of destruction you are going for:
This is the constraint generated by the connect adjacent pieces SOP, notice how they give more importance to the fracture points and glue them together.
This is the standard constraint created by the Voronoi fracture; notice how it focuses more on linking all the elements together rather than sticking the fractures together.
When creating constraints with connect adjacent pieces, do not forget to use the RBD constraint properties SOP to edit attributes like constraint name and strength.
[#7] Voronoi fracture name attribute append
The default option in the Voronoi fracture SOP is to "overwrite" the name attributes with new names for rach fracture crated. This is a bad workflow, as we could lose references in the names from earlier in the network. Instead we should change this to "append", which will ADD a new extension to existing names, keeping the naming reference clean.