with Ryan Bury
5.1 Making Bricks
We’ll be building this house out of bricks because it will be the easiest to construct and the most appealing. Here is my brick:
You can see the scaling that I have applied to make the brick look like a brick highlighted in yellow. The scales are: (x:1.0, y:0.35, z:0.25).
In this demonstration, contrary to the large tower, it is important to have a small space in between the bricks like this:
Create a small section like I have just shown you and we will add constraints between them.
Additionally, we should add physics to the scene at this point. Make sure to add passive physics to the floor and active physics to the bricks. Also, adjust the friction of the floor to be 1.0 and the bricks to be 0.95 so the bricks stick to the ground like they would in real life.
5.2 Constraints
Constraints will be like the mortar in our house. They will hold everything together. In Blender, we can create breakable constraints that will break when a certain amount of force is applied to them. This will allow us to create our destructible brick house.
The disadvantages to constraints, at least in Blender, is that they must be created one by one and then duplicated. It is a much slower process than simply stacking bricks on one another.
Make sure to have only 2 objects selected. You add a constraint by going to the left physics panel and clocking Connect under Constraints (highlighted in yellow). Then an empty object with the constraint in it will be created (highlighted in Green).
Now, we must adjust the properties of the constraint. Select each constraint one by one that we’ve created and go to the physics tab. Here, we’ll make the constraint breakable (highlighted in yellow) and adjust its threshold to 5.0 (highlighted in green). Also, make sure to uncheck the Disable Collisions box (highlighted in blue).
*Note: From here on out, make sure that each constraint created has these properties or your house will act quite weirdly.
5.3 Building the House
Now, we’ll make the first wall that will make up the house. Simply arrange the bricks in a crossing pattern like they always are and connect them using constraints.
It is easiest to do this with this process:
- Make 2 bricks
- Connect 2 bricks *
- Duplicate all (‘Shift’+’d’)
- Connect ‘chunks’ *
* Make sure to adjust the settings of your constraints as previously described!
Though one important part is to build the walls so they can be rotated and interlock to form a larger rectangle. It may also behoove you to add materials to the bricks at an early stage so the houe looks decent in its full form.
Protip: You can drastically reduce the time it takes to connect 2 objects by right clicking on the Connect button you normally use and adding a shortcut to the action!
Here is how I built my wall. Yours should look similar, maybe just different in size.
Another helpful tip is to use ‘Alt’ + ‘Right Click’ to bring up a menu of possible selections when trying to select the constraints through the bricks. This brings up a menu of possible selections; just select the constraint and set its properties.
It may also be helpful to use ‘c’ which toggles the circle select in order to select the constraints. Connecting these areas is the hardest part.
Continue by building all 4 walls and adding flourishes as you see fit. I will add a roof, but it won’t be necessary for the simulation and it is moderately hard to accomplish.
5.4 Destructive Instruments
What is the point of creating an entirely destructible house if we aren’t going to destroy it?
Here’s what we’ll be destroying the house with today. Feel free to try out other things as well, get creative!
- A small ball
- Wood planks
- A massive hail storm
- 2 wrecking balls
In order to do this you’ll need to know how to give a physics object an initial velocity. Take a look at the Block Tower Tutorial.
Here are the objects we’ll be throwing at the wall.
5.4.1 Ball
Creating the ball is the easiest of all the objects. We’ll simply go to the materials tab and add a blue material to the ball as in the following image (You can even copy my color if you’d like).
5.4.2 Wood Planks
To create the wood planks and make them look nice we’ll have to add a simple texture as well as a Material. Follow the pictures and it should be relatively easy.
When you’re adding the texture you need to do 3 things that I will highlight.
- Change type to Wood (Highlighted in yellow).
- In the new Wood panel change settings to Saw and Band Noise. Also adjust the settings below that (All highlighted in blue).
- Change the color of the highlight material at the bottom of the menu. (Highlighted in purple).
5.4.3 Hail Storm
To create the hail storm we’ll just create many small ice balls and let them fall on the house.
This is what you need to do:
- Create a small icosphere.
- Add it to the physics world.
- Apply a material.
- Use an array modifier.
- Separate individual objects.
- Use the Randomize Transform function.
Creating a small icosphere:
Adding the sphere to the physics world:
Applying a material to the sphere:
Using an array modifier to create 400 hail spheres:
Click both Apply buttons (Highlighted in blue).
Separating individual objects:
With the same process (pressing space to search through functions) type “set origin” and select “origin to geometry”.
This process separates each mesh into its own separate object and makes sure that the origin is in the correct place.
Using the Randomize Transform function:
The values for this function don’t need to be exactly mine. Try different values to achieve different results and spreads.
5.4.4 Wrecking Balls
The wrecking balls will be quite simple. We’ll create 2 enormous balls and throw them at the house to make sure it is destroyed at the end of the demonstration.
Simply copy the material data that I have if you want your balls to look like mine. Don’t forget to add Active Physics to the balls and we’ll get started animating!
5.4.5 Animating
I’ll show you how to do this in another scene and then you can add it to your project how you see fit.
First I add a small platform and a ball and add the appropriate physics to both of these objects.
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.
5.5 Result
Combine it all together and you should come up with something like this.
