Creating a Dynamic Wrecking Ball Simulation Using Mass FX and Constraints in 3ds Max

Preview

1. Creating the Chain

Step 1

Open 3ds Max. Go to Shapes > Splines > Ellipse and draw an oval shape in the front viewport.

Step 2

With the oval shape selected, open the Rendering rollout tab. Turn on Enable In Renderer and Enable In Viewport options. Increase the Thickness value to 7.

Step 3

Right click on the oval shape and turn it into Editable Poly.

Step 4

With the oval poly shape selected, click on Hierarchy panel. Enable Affect Pivot Only option and drag the pivot of the oval poly shape to the extreme right.

Don’t forget to turn off the Affect Pivot Only option after that.

Step 5

Make a copy of the oval poly shape and rotate it. Both objects must not intersect each other.

Step 6

Make several copies of the oval shapes to form a chain link.

2. Creating Constraint

Step 1

With the chain selected, go to Mass FX toolbar and select Set Selected as Dynamic Rigid Body option.

Step 2

With the first oval poly shape from the left side selected, go to Constrains > Create Universal Constraint.

Step 3

It creates a UConstraint at the pivot point of the oval poly shape.

Step 4

For the first oval poly object, its parent would be the next oval poly object.

Click on Parent tab and select the next oval poly object as the parent of the first oval poly object. Turn on Free radio buttons of Swing Y, Swing Z and Twist properties.

Swing Y Swing Z and Twist properties — Swing Y, Swing Z and Twist properties

Step 5

You can lower the UConstraint icon size also. Put a smaller value in Icon Size.

Step 6

Following the same way, with the next oval poly object selected, go to Constraints > Create Universal Constraint.

Step 7

It creates a UConstraint at the pivot point of the oval poly shape.

Step 8

For this oval poly object, its parent would be the next oval poly object. So, click on Parent tab and select the next oval poly object as the parent of the selected oval poly object. Turn on Free radio buttons of Swing Y, Swing Z and Twist properties.

Step 9

Following the same way, keep making constraints for each oval poly object one by one. After a couple of minutes, you will have the completed chain.

Step 10

Create a sphere. Put it at the end of the chain link. This will act as the wrecking ball.

Step 11

Put the pivot of the sphere at the edge of the sphere as shown in the following image.

Step 12

Make this sphere as a dynamic rigid body.

Step 13

Apply Universal Constraint to the sphere.

Step 14

For this sphere object, its parent would be the first oval poly object. Click on Parent tab and select the first oval poly object as the parent of the selected sphere object. Turn on Free radio buttons of Swing Y, Swing Z and Twist properties.

Step 15

Create a small low poly sphere at the extreme right end of the chain.

Step 16

This time, make this sphere as a Kinematic Rigid Body.

Step 17

With the indicated oval poly object selected, apply Universal Constraint to it.

Step 18

Select the low poly sphere as the parent of it. Turn on Free radio buttons of Swing Y and Swing Z. Keep the radio button of Twist turned off.

Step 19

With the wrecking ball sphere selected, click on Mass FX Tool icon. Inside the Mass FX Tool window, go to Multi-Object Editor tab and put the Mass value as 5.

Step 20

Click on Start Simulation icon. You will see a fine simulation of chained wrecking ball in the viewport.

3. Installing Fracture Voronoi Script

Step 1

Go to scriptspot.com and download Fracture Voronoi script.

Step 2

Save the script in the 3ds Max Scripts folder.

4. Fracture the Wall

Step 1

Create a box in the viewport to make a wall.

Step 2

With the wall selected, go to Max Script > Run Script.

Step 3

It opens the Choose Editor file window. Select the Fracture Voronoi script and click on Open.

Step 4

It opens the Fracture Voronoi script window. Click on Pick Object button and then select the wall in the viewport.

Step 5

I have set the Nb parts as 40 since I want the wall to be broken into forty different chunks. I've selected the Uniform color option as I want all the chunks in a same color.