Wall/Glass destruction using DMM in Maya

                          In this post I'm going to show you how to destruction wall/glass using dmm plugin. In my previous post I talked about some destruction methods using nDynamics but this also good for smashing objects.

                           First load the dmm plugin. Delete the history of your object and go to Modify->Freeze Transformations. Go to dmm shell tab. Then select your object and click Create DMM from Polymesh with AutoCage.

                          Go to DMM Asset Manager by clicking last icon on the dmm shell. Scroll down and you can see default value of the Target Face Count is 100.0. For high quality animations you can use higher values like 2000 but you can't if your are using dmm free version. Click Browse for Splinter's Image File.

                           Images are located in my documents->dmm libraries->Splinters folder. Choose suitable image file. In here I use regular bricks. When you click open it will create blue splinter box which you have to scale according to your object.

                           Select the blue object and shift select the polygon object. Click Add Splinters to selected DMM Object. Then assign suitable material to object(DMM Material->Assign New DMM Material). In here I use something like hard material. If you are doing glass smash animation use safety glass material.

                           Click on the object. Go to DMM Asset->Add New DMM Region to Dmm Object->DMM Passive Region. It will create a new small green box. Scale it and place under the object(wall/glass). Make sure down edges of the wall must be inside of the region. Add another 3 regions and place it near up,left and right edges. It will prevent falling object due to gravity.

                           Select the wall and add another region all around it.

                         Create a DMM sphere. We are going to use it as a collider. Go to Asset Manager and put a tic on DMM Passive. Move it across the wall with the time. Go to time frame before it collide with the wall. Select final large passive region and set the key. Then go to the next time frame and move the region downward. Set a key.

                                 Play your animation. This is the basic method but you can control other attributes like gravity, wind etc. I'm not going to show it here. You can get it very easily. If you have any questions, post it as a comment.