Cinematic Physics in Hangover MOD news

Please enjoy the cinematic physics demonstration which provides some insight into the creation process:

• create your building, bridge or whatever you would like to destroy from BSP and also block out the surroundings in Hammer (you will need the environment for the exploding parts to bounce off of),
• save the map .VMF and open it with Crafty (configure settings until everything shows up nice) then export it to OBJ,
• import this into max and you should have textures, UVs everything in palace (you will need to export all the textures you use with GCFScape),
• now start low-poly editing the thing that will be destroyed (in this case a building) to break it up into believable chunks (wood should break along the boards, etc.) you will also have to UV and texture the inner faces that are created during this process,
• depending on the form or poly count of the chunks created you might also need to create proxy meshes, (e.g. if the chunks interlock with each other and do not fly apart during the Reactor simulation as expected then a bit smaller proxy mesh or the interlocking parts removed will solve the problem, also, lowering the poly count will speed up the simulation)
• use deforming meshes in about the same places where your explosion effects, oil barrels, etc. are in Hammer (these are spheres that are rapidly sized up in the first few frames of the animation, then quickly shrinked and moved out of the way) to simulate the force of explosions,
• finally when you are satisfied with the animation Reactor created you have to export the required elements from 3ds max to SMD and create a prop_dynamic from that,
• you also have to create some collision geometry using the settled meshes at the end of the simulation if the area can be visited by the player after the explosion otherwise she would walk right through the scattered pieces.

There is a detailed tutorial from Lord Ned about the above at: Forums.tf2maps.net

Software used: Hammer, 3ds max, Wunderboy's 3DS Max VTF Texture Support, Cannonfodder's SMD Exporter, Crafty, GCFScape, GUIStudioMDL, VTFEdit