Attach To Surface

Download: A.T.S

I originally developed this script with Adrian Fjellberg for one of his early projects. In that scene the team wanted to shoot a fireball down a temple hall. The temple floor was to crack up an break as the fireball progressed. The technique was envisioned by Adrian at the time although he didn't quite know how to attach the myriad of broken bits to a plane without having to do every single one of them manually.
After a few hours we had nailed the effect and the setup was more or less painless.

A few weeks ago I got the idea to use a similar effect in my Advanced Visual Effects module at Teesside University. Unfortunately I didn't have the script we wrote back in the day so I had to buckle down and figure out all the maths again. 

Here's a breakdown of the effect:

1: The ball rolls over a plane

2: A set volume selection is used to deform the plane; in this case a cylinder

3: Using Fracture Voroni to fracture a box I created a broken up surface. When rendered this looks smooth.

4: The Attach To Surface (A.T.S.) script is used to generate a point at every fracture, parent the fracture to it's respective points and then attach the points to the nearest triangle in the plane.

5: The result can be controlled by the size of the cylinder, the falloff used by the volume selection and the distance the affected faces in the target plane is moved

If you don't know how to install a maxScript properly please read this.

The script is used as follows:

 - Press the "Pick EditableMesh" button and choose the surface you are attaching geometry to. 

 - Choose every object you want to attach.

 - Press the "A.T.S" button.

This effect can be used on any geometry not just a plane. Here is an example of more or less he same effect on a human mesh.

Any questions/suggestions/bugs you can either drop a comment here or send me an email