Tutorial 4. Block Tower

with Ryan Bury

4.1 Setting the Scene

As we have done in the past, we start by expanding the starting block into a large plane for our demonstration to live on. Since we’ve already done this, I will not show you it.

04-001 brick

We need to create a brick to be the most basic piece to our eventually massive tower.

I have scaled my brick to x: 1.0, y: 0.2, and z: 0.4 in order to create the most effective brick.

Feel free to play around with these measurements to create something slightly different if you wish.

4.2 Building Blocks

The most important part in building this tower is going to be making sure the bricks are as close together as possible so when the tower is simulated it doesn’t vibrate out of control.

I’ll show 2 examples of this so you understand what could happen.

04-002 stableTower 04-003 shakyTower

On the upper is a tower that took around 10 minutes to line up each brick perfectly to attain a mostly stable tower, even though it is an inherently unstable design.

On the lower is a tower that was thrown together in around 30 seconds and it shows. The tower jolts in the beginning and immediately starts falling apart. If this same lack of attention to detail were applied to a large tower, the demonstration would undoubtedly fail, so patience and testing is the key to this demonstration.

04-004 buildingBlock

Create a small design similar to this. Make sure to frequently play the animation to ensure that the blocks are lined up correctly and move very little when the animation is played.

This is the Building Block that we will be using to create our whole tower.

4.3 Template

Now we’ll create the template that we’ll use to create our tower.

04-005 copyingBlock

Copy the building block that was created, move it slightly along either the x or y axis and rotate it 90 degrees so that it interlocks just like in my picture.

Again, accuracy is the key. Make sure the objects are almost perfectly seated by testing the physics frequently and making sure the blocks don’t jump around.

04-006 creatingTemplate

This is the template I’ve created that I like to use. Because of its repeating but opposite nature it can easily be copied and stacked without hassle. You could make yours with a different pattern if you’d like.

Now we have all we need to create large towers of many shapes and sizes.

I will move this template over to the side of my demonstration so I can duplicate it as often as I like.

4.4 Tower

I don’t plan on showing all the steps in creating the tower. It is only duplicating the template and stacking it in a careful manner. Many different types of towers can be created and they will all create a different result. This process can take anywhere from 20 minutes to multiple hours depending on what you want to create.

04-007 towerProgress

04-008 tower

04-009 towerStill

Here are some images from the progress of building my tower. As you can probably see, I’ve added a brown material to them as well to make the Render look better in the end.

You can also catch a glimpse of the lighting that I’ve added. If you want to learn more about that, take a look at the Massive Pinball Tutorial. Otherwise, check out the Blender Documentation.


If your having some trouble making a steady tower even if you’re being super careful, you can adjust some settings to hopefully make the simulation even more stable. Just follow the instructions in the picture below.

04-009.5 changingSettings

4.5 Wrecking Ball

I’ll show you how to do this in another scene and then we’ll add it to our project.

First I add a small platform and a ball and add the appropriate physics to both of these objects.

04-010 addingAnimation

Make sure that you are in the first frame of playback as indicated in the purple area.

Then right click on the balls location information in the 3D viewport highlighted in yellow, select Insert Keyframe.

After that, select Animated in the Properties/Physics panel. Then right click it and select Insert Keyframe where highlighted in blue.

What this does is designate that the object is animated, so it shouldn’t react to gravity or forces the same way as a regular physical object. It also asserts that the object will remain at the location we specified.

When playing this animation it should do nothing.

Now we must go to frame 2, move the object slightly and insert a location keyframe like we did before in the yellow area.

Lastly, we move to frame 3. Uncheck Animated in the Properties/Physics panel and make sure to Insert Keyframe as we did before.

Doing this makes the object move to the desired location in frame 2 and then immediately in frame 3 is released from the animation and set in the motion we prescribed. The result should look something like the following.

04-011 addingAnimation

We know how to make the wrecking ball so let’s add it into our tower. I’ll add one and show you what the results are. In the end I’m planning on adding multiple projectiles.

04-012 addingAnimation

 

So, the tower would eventually fall down, but the animation is pretty boring. I will add more balls and maybe some explosions as well!

4.6 Result

Hopefully you can achieve some results that are as good or better than mine!

04-013 result

(Ignore the floating bricks, my program bugged out and it was too late when I had realized it.)