Chess VFX

I was approached by my tutor to create a vfx within Maya or Houdini that simulates creeping destruction / impact / collapse. We recorded some footage to see how tiles/concrete break in real life (posted under the final result). As well as how a chessboard might react. However in the final result we changed this a bit so that the concrete is more hollow underneath.

After the reference footage was shot, we learnt about how to use rigid bodies inside of SideFx's Houdini and how the scene would be set up. This involves multiple nodes and when compiling with textures needs a top render layer that in the most basic sense copies what the dynamics do with the textures / materials applied. The whole simulation is comprised of DoP (Dynamics Operator) networks and SoP (Surface Operator) networks which eventually all tie into the same output. In the chess board is a voronoi fracture a long with a material for both inside and outside and then a foreach node which ties into the dynamics network to the glue constraint. This makes the board have different breaking values, as seen in the footage although the board takes immense pressure on the corners a large amount of the overall board remains intact. This gives more of the illusion of the board falling out from under the pieces.

Below is the first result, which as pointed out by a colleague the light source was in the incorrect position.

Here is the reference footage we shot: