Pulldownit 5.8 for 3ds Max released

Posted on by
Reply

NOTE: Users of Puldownit 5.x cloud floating licenses must install this update to can connect to the licenses server.

Pulldownit 5.8 is here! this new version introduces a Fast Stacking & Deactivation solver which computes up to 4 times faster in massive destruction scenes, in addition instanced shapes are now supported in the core solver allowing to compute thousands of hi-poly objects in dynamics faster and with much less memory overhead.

Animated characters computes faster when colliding and fracturing other objects, and a new Anim Speed Multiplier parameter allows to fine tune the strength of the impact between animated objects and dynamic ones, besides cracker multiplier can be synced to node visibility allowing to decrease or disable the crack effect at any chosen frame.

Wind & Gravity Fields decay is now considered as exclusion volume, animated decay is supported, getting finer control over force fields affecting rigid bodies and fractures.

Regarding shattering, PDI Jagginess gets a new “Asymmetric tessellation” mode which generates nearly 50% fewer polygons with an appearance of rough faces close to that achieved using Uniform Tessellation.

There are also useful improvements to the UI, you can add jagginess to all PDI fragments in scene with one click, and there is a new option to set all dynamic values to default for selected rigid bodies.

Last but not least we have fixed quite a few annoying issues from previous version, making the tool more predictable and reliable than ever. You can review below all performance and usability improvements, and you can check the whole list of fixes in the Pulldownit version logs page

Read the full list of fixes in the Pulldownit web site version logs

Licensed users can access already Pulldownit 5.8 from his account and there is a demo version for 3ds Max 2024 in the Thinkinetic web site.

Shatter New Features

New Jagginess mode “Asymmetric tessellation”, this new tessellation mode generates nearly 50% fewer polygons than the Uniform one with a similar appearance of rough faces.

Dynamics New Features

New Fast Stacking & Deactivation solver, scenes involving hundreds or thousands of fragments in dynamics now computes up to 4 times faster, besides this new solver highly reduces drift motion of fragments resting in the ground.

Instanced shapes supported in core solver, optimized support for instanced shapes in dynamics, allowing to compute massive simulation of thousands of objects faster and with less memory overhead.

Improved performance in fracture against animated bodies, animated or deforming objects now computes faster when colliding and breaking other objects, besides user can easily control the strength of the impact with the new anim speed multiplier parameter.

Wind & Gravity fields range as exclusion volume, rigid bodies and fragments outside of the field decay area are not affected, animated range is supported.

UI Enhancements

New user parameter Anim Speed Multiplier, allowing to easily control the strength of the impact between animated objects and dynamic ones.

New ability to sync cracker multiplier to node visibility, allowing to modify the strength of the crack effect during the simulation or disable it completely at desired frame.

New option “Add Jagginess to All fragments”, allowing to add jagginess to all PDI fragments in scene with one click.

New Jaggines user prompt, displaying quick info about current jaggy mode and selected fragment state.

New “Fast Stacking” simulation option, user can revert to classic, more accurate, but slower stacking solver by disabling this option.

New UI option “set all dynamic values to default” for rigid bodies.

Pulldownit 5.7 for Maya released

Posted on by
Reply

NOTE: Users of Puldownit 5.x cloud floating licenses must install this update to can connect to the licenses server.

Pulldownit 5.7 is here! this new version introduces a new Fast Stacking & Deactivation solver which computes up to 4 times faster in massive destruction scenes, in addition instanced shapes are supported for dynamics and shattering so you can compute thousands of hi-poly objects in dynamics seamlessly and with much less memory overhead.

Animated characters now computes faster when colliding and fracturing other objects, and a new Anim Speed Multiplier parameter allows to fine tune the strength of the impact between animated objects and dynamic ones, besides cracker multiplier can be animated allowing to decrease or disable the crack effect at any frame.

Regarding shattering, PDI Jagginess gets a new “Asymmetric tessellation” mode which generates nearly 50% fewer polygons with a similar look of rough faces than when using Uniform Tessellation.

There are also useful improvements to the UI, a new option to create several fractures at once and you can add jagginess to all PDI fragments in scene with one click. Hierarchies of rigid bodies can be auto created just by selecting its parent group, and there is a new option to set all dynamic values to default for selected rigid bodies.

Last but not least we have fixed quite a few annoying issues from previous version,you can review below all performance and usability improvements and you can check the whole list of fixes in the Pulldownit version logs page:

Read the full list of fixes in the Pulldownit web site version logs

Licensed users can already access Pulldownit 5.7 from his account and there is a demo version for Maya 2024 in the Thinkinetic web site.

Shatter New Features

Shatter it support instanced shapes, instanced shapes are supported and can be shattered and reshattered seamlessly.

New Jagginess mode “Asymmetric tessellation”, this new tessellation mode generates nearly 50% fewer polygons than the Uniform one with a similar appearance of rough faces.

Dynamics New Features

New Fast Stacking & Deactivation solver, scenes involving hundreds or thousands of fragments in dynamics now computes up to 4 times faster, besides this new solver highly reduces drift motion of fragments resting in the ground.

Instanced shapes supported as rigid bodies, PDI solver now supports instanced shapes in dynamics, allowing to compute massive simulation of thousands of objects with less memory overhead.

Improved performance in fracture against animated bodies, animated or deforming objects now computes faster when colliding and breaking other objects, besides user can easily control the strength of the impact with the new anim speed multiplier parameter.

UI Enhancements

New parameter Anim Speed Multiplier, allowing to easily control the strength of the impact between animated objects and dynamic ones.

New ability to animate cracker multiplier, user can now modify the strength of the crack effect during the simulation or disable it completely at desired frame.

New Fracture setup option “One per Shatter Group”, allowing to create several fracture bodies at once from the current selection of objects.

New option “Add Jagginess to All fragments”, allowing to add jagginess to all PDI fragments in scene with one click.

New “Fast Stacking” simulation option, user can revert to classic, more accurate, but slower stacking solver by disabling this option.

New ability to auto assign unique names to duplicated nodes, when selecting nodes to create rigid bodies from them PDI will rename any duplicated node automatically if authorized by user.

Animatable fracture parameters are auto displayed for current selected object.

New ability to create hierarchies of rigid bodies just selecting its parent group.

New UI option “set all dynamic values to default” for rigid bodies.

Case study: Angry Orc Destroying Statues

Posted on by
Reply

Andres de Mingo   the author of this nice shot,  kindly explains us how he did the destruction effects using Pulldownit plugin in 3d Max.

Cracking the last statue

There are 3 statues  to break consecutively, first and second are destroyed completely but last one is only cracked by the shock wave happening when the Orc hits the ground with the hammer, I started doing this effect in first place by advancing the start time of Pdi simulation to set it just before the hammer hits the ground. I use the nice crackers feature of Pulldownit to do it. Also to speed up computation the orc itself wasn’t set in dynamics as  for this effect I needed only the hammer to be included , doing it in this way I got a fast playback rate for adjusting the destruction.

After the effect was done I baked simulation keys for the statue and cracked ground.

Destroying the second Statue

This was a more difficult effect as I wanted the statue to stay in place but being completely destroyed by the impact with the hammer, for this I shattered the statue in around 1000 shards, and reshattering it in 1000 shards again in the middle area by squeezing and displacing the shatter gizmo. After that I created a fracture body for it, setting its hardness value around 20 units to make it very brittle and PDi did the work nicely. This time I had to set the Orc also in simulation but computation time was fast anyway. As before I baked simulation keys for the statue before continuing with the shot.

Destroying the First Statue

I shattered the statue in around 2000 shards in the same way I did with the other one but setting its Fracture body as static “only breaks” because I didn’t want the fragments flaying away too much, this time the Orc was set as mesh ”animated” because it had to walk across the debris and kick them in his way to the next statue, but computation was still pretty fast, after I was happy with the destruction I baked animation keys for the statue.

Conclusions

You can find the orc and other nice models by Andres de Mingo in

https://www.layerforged.com/

,they offer  a wide variety of 3D printed resin miniatures for your modeling projects, role-playing games (DnD, Pathfinder, HeroQuest) and much more.

Pulldownit 5.5 for 3ds Max released

Posted on by
Reply

Pulldownit 5.5 for 3ds Max comes with important updates, Shatter it tool has been multithreaded and highly optimized, getting up to 4x faster shattering with regards to previous release, allowing to shatter hi-poly models in hundreds of fragments in a few seconds. Creating Chipping areas on the model is now faster as you can discard shatter centers directly in the viewport just by clicking the mouse over it.

Cracks generation computes now 2x faster and Bounded Cracks has been enhanced with the ability to turn them dynamic at the desired frame, allowing to create easily stress cracks that ends up tearing the surface completely at some moment.

Working in complex destruction scenes is easier and more intuitive, in cases of many objects fracturing, dynamic solver has been adjusted to get nice fracture results with default parameters and when two objects collide each other you can decide which of them will break in first place simply by reducing its hardness value.

Regarding the UI, in this new version you can create several fracture objects at once or create several crackers at once and modify them, there are other nice additions like toggle display of all crackers paths with one click.

Last but not least we have fixed quite a few annoying issues from previous version, making the tool more predictable and reliable than ever.

You can review below all performance and usability improvements and you can check the whole list of fixes in the Pulldownit version logs page:

Read the full list of fixes in the Pulldownit web site version

Licensed users can access already Pulldownit 5.5 from his account and there is a demo version for 3ds Max 2024 in the Thinkinetic web site.

Shatter New Features

Shatter it multithreaded, getting up to 4x faster shattering allowing to shatter an object in hundreds and thousands of pieces in a few seconds.

New ability to remove shatter centers directly in the viewport, when in Shatter it draft mode simply by clicking mouse + ctrl key, the selected shatter center is deleted.

Dynamics New Features

Cracks Generation 2x faster, stress cracks or combinations of stress and dynamic cracks now computes 2 times faster.

New ability to generate Bounded Cracks until frame , stress crack propagation can be set to last until desired frame, after that it continues as an usual dynamic crack.

Initial velocity can be set for “activation at frame” fracture bodies, linear and angular velocity can be added to static fractures bodies, setting in this way the initial motion direction when the object becomes dynamic.

More intuitive behaviour in collision between fracture bodies, user can decide which of them will break in first place simply by reducing its hardness value. Besides small fragments collisions don’t trigger fracture anymore, therefore fracture activation starts always at the exact impact moment between the two objects.

UI Enhancements                                                                                                                   

New Ability to create several fracture bodies at once

New ability to set parameters for several fracture bodies at once.

New ability to set initial velocity at random for many fracture bodies

New ability to edit name of selected Cracker.

New ability to show/hide all Crackers paths at once.

New ability to set parameters for several Crackers at once.

New ability to create Crackers for all parented curves at once.

                                                                                                         

Choosing Leaning Direction before Breaking

Posted on by
Reply

This post is an extension of the “Cracking an Ancient Statue “ tutorial you can find here:

Cracking an Ancient Statue in Maya

Some users has asked if it is possible to decide the leaning direction of a model before breaking it completely with Pulldownit; the answer is yes, you can do it  and very easily.

For choosing the leaning direction you have simply to select the fracture object in PDI Basic Fractures tab,  then go to Fractures->Dynamic Properties tab and set initial velocity according to your desired leaning direction, that’s all.

If your initial velocity parameter is greyed out you have to set Basic Fractures->Activation to “at frame” or “At first hit” to enable it. Here a demo video of the effect:

Notice the bigger initial velocity, the leaning will be faster, so better to set it to small values to get a natural motion of the model.

Pulldownit for Maya 2024

Posted on by
Reply

Pulldownit , the destruction plugin, is already available for Maya 2024, you can review latest features of PDI for Maya in this post:

Pulldownit 5.5 for Maya released

Maya 2024 itself brings a number of updates in animation, modeling and performance, and native support for Apple Silicon chips in Macos systems. This new version introduces a novel Graph Editor Sculpting feature, allowing to drag or smooth animation curves in brush-like style to make adjustments on the fly. In addition, animators con now display all skin weights values directly in the viewport and multiple Skin Clusters are supported. Besides the Time Slider has been redesigned for better handling of keys selection ranges and audio waves visulaization. Finally Autodesk claims of significant performance improvements, especially when playing back animation on complex rigs.

Regarding modeling, Retopology tool has got a number of updates,a new symmetry option allows to get the same exact topology at both sides of the model, and there is new options for preserving edges by angle or component tag, also user can now display both input mesh and retopologized one simultaneously, allowing to compare result and adjust areas visually and there is a new option to pre-check mesh during Retopologize to quickly identify and fix mesh issues.

An there is a new unsmooth option which lets you simplify a smoothed mesh, useful for creating low resolution versions of 3D models, although currently only works with meshes subdivided by the Catmull-Clark method.

The old good Make Live tool has got an useful improvement aswell, now It supports multiple objects, speeding up the drawing of splines or quads over existing geometry.

USD support introduces LookdevX, a new material editor for creating USD shaders inside Maya. It is independent of the classic Maya Hypershade tool therefore counts with its own editor, according to Autodesk it is intended to work seamlessly across multiple DCC tools in the pipeline.

In the simulation field Bifrost updates to version 2.7 introducing a new MPM solver able to simulate snow and high viscous matter like toothpaste, ketchup or ice-cream along with improved volume rendering in the viewport.

AntCgi review and test many of Maya 2024 new features in this nice video:

Pulldownit for 3ds Max 2024

Posted on by
Reply

Pulldownit , the destruction plugin, is already available for 3d Max 2024 , you can learn more about latest features of PDI in this great tutorial by Esteban Cuesta:

Oneiric temple destruction in 3ds Max

3d Max 2024 itself brings quite a lot of new features for modeling, animation and rendering and a high performance boost when working with STL models.

In the modelling field introduces a brand new boolean modifier, contrary to classic compound objects,  boolean operations are now managed in the modifiers stack so user can remove or re-order them seamlessly, in addition it can convert the model to an OpenVDB version making the boolean operation more robust and independent of the source topology. Array Modifier introduced in previous version gets a new Phyllotaxis distribution mode for generating spiral pattern as seeing in many natural structures like flowers. The whole Modifiers tab has been ported to QT making it faster navigation and includes a handy search filter for fast selection on the long modifiers list.

The slate material editor has been rewritten using QT making it much more customizable, and besides user can now package several nodes into one single compound for better legibility when working with complex graphs. In addition there is a new Material Switcher node allowing to quickly change the material of an object for fast look-dev workflow

Animation has got also an important update, a new “Transform List” controller allows to add multiple controllers to an object and blend them together, in addition motion paths can now be displayed and adjusted in viewport for all controllers types.

Max 2024 introduces support for the OCIO colour-management broadly used in the animation industry although Gamma workflow is still the default mode, MaxToA now supports OCIO standard as well.

So a noticiable amount of improvements, Autodesk continues strengthen 3ds Max for polygonal modelling and visualization task, though there are some important enhancements for animation this time, hope it continues in the following updates this year.

Eloy Andaluz introduces all of these new features in a great demo video you can review here: