Basic Fragmentation.

Thinking Particles Operators Used in this tutorial: (O) Object to Particle, (O) PPass, (O) Shape Collision, (O) Standard Force, (O) Motion Inheritance, (O) Standard Collision, (O) Fragment, (O) Freeze, (C) Always True, (C) Threshold, (H) Node, (H) Integer, (H) Point 3, (H) Add&Multiply.

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 Tutorial Length: 17:29 min

In this tutorial i'll try to explain the basics of fragmentation.
The Thinking Particles System used in this scene contains three particle groups.
The first group is named core, and contains the cilinder object in the middle.
The second group is named outer layer, and contains three tube objects, wich will follow the core object.
When the outer layer particles hit the ground, they will be fragmented, and will be transfered to the third group, fragments.

The first dynamic set uses the object to particle operator to create a particle from a cilinder object.

The second one is named create outer layer and transforms the three tube objects to particles.

Once the particles are created, we have to attach the outer layer to the core.
This is done with the Motion Inherit Operator.

The third Dynamic set is named add force to core.
We use the Standard Force operator to add motion to the cilinder.

This will add a gravity force to the core particle group.
The Gravity space warp is binded to the Thinking Particle System.

We also use an Integer Helper to increase the power of the force.

The next Dynamic Set is named core floor collision. It uses the Shape Collision operator. For the floor node we use a box object.
The core particle will deform when it will hit the floor.

The next Dynamic set is named create fragments on collision.
Here is calculated the difference between the z value of the outer layer particles position, and the z value of the floor object. When the value is less then 25, the Treshold Test will activate the Fragment operator.
Why 25? Because the particle position is calculated from the pivot point of the object. In this case the pivot point is in the center of the tube, and the tube radius is 25. The fragments are then passed to the fragments particle group.

The next Dynamic Set manage the fragments floor collision.
Here we use the Standard Collision operator. This operator needs a deflector space warp.
We could also use Shape collision operator, but because this particles are not deforming on collision, we use standard collision. To keep the fragments from flying away we also bind them to the gravity force. For this we use the Standard Force Operator.

Then we have to handle the collision between the fragments and the floor. If not, the fragments would fall through the core cilinder. For this we use the Shape collision operator.

The last two dynamic sets will freeze the particles when their speed will drop under a certain value. For this we use the Treshold Test, and the Freeze operator.

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