I am making a film and I am wondering if there is any way I can manipulate models and make it look like they crack in half etc.

For ex., I have a helicopter in a scene and it get’s shot. Is there anyways I can change/animate the helicopter to look realistically blown up to peices? Not cheesy blow up - like blowing up to blocks and such, but into realistic, organic, pieces. Thanks.

There’s no easy way to do it. You have to model the helicopter before and after then animate the visibility.

3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC

There are many ways to do it...Using this may help you get closer.

http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/disappear_an_object_with_texture_map_in_3ds_max

I know it isn’t what you want but search for breaking glass in the tutorials. (Thinking outside the box.)

3ds Max 9 thru 2013
Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit OS SP1
Dual Intel® Xeon® 6 core X5650 @ 2.67GHz CPU 36GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro 4000
450GB HDD (x3) and 2TB HDD

3ds Max 2012 Certified Professional Models to Motion