I’ve been asked to create a picture that contains a transparent box full of gravel or broken rock.  I can’t pull this off with a simple material and I need to position the chunks of rock so that there is air space around each bit of rock.  So I think this means I’m going to have to create the many rock pieces as individual objects.

What would be nice is if I cold take one solid object and “crack” it into many smaller pieces - much the way you would when you smack a piece of sandstone with a hammer.  (I could use an animation of this in the future for the same project.)

What I’m hoping someone can tell me - or point me to - is a quick way of doing this.  I need to manipulate each of the final pieces so a Particle Array Explosion won’t work - nor will much of anything that requires a process that I can think off.

I just hope someone isn’t going to tell me that I need to model each and every piece by hand.

Looking for some good news....

3ds Max 2009 SP1
Windows XP Professional x64, SP2
Dell Precision T5400
Dual Intel Xeon E5420, 8 GB Ram
NVIDIA Quadro FX 570

The RayFire tool would really help out here.

http://www.mirvadim.com/

I made a simple fracture scipt a few weeks ago: click me
It will only divide your object in bits. You’ll still have to move the parts away from each other, either manually or with reactor.

max 9
Photoshop CS3
Windows XP
tin box + plug
Wacom Intuos3

Caprier,

Thanks!!!  Your Fracture script is just what I needed.  With it, I was able to break a box into 100 individual pieces in about 5 seconds.  Much better than the hours I would have had to spend creating each little chuck by hand.

3ds Max 2009 SP1
Windows XP Professional x64, SP2
Dell Precision T5400
Dual Intel Xeon E5420, 8 GB Ram
NVIDIA Quadro FX 570

This is just a test, but it shows the fracture script in use.  I’ve used reactor to give each piece some weight and just let the object fall apart.

I’ll be adding textures in my next test.

Once again, thanks for the script!

3ds Max 2009 SP1
Windows XP Professional x64, SP2
Dell Precision T5400
Dual Intel Xeon E5420, 8 GB Ram
NVIDIA Quadro FX 570

	Attachment
15010_DfxNirXo9ti3SuoMun5z.mov

You’re welcome. Glad it helped.
And yes, reactor is perfect for the job.

max 9
Photoshop CS3
Windows XP
tin box + plug
Wacom Intuos3

Hello!  I’m a student and have not been introduced to using scripts yet.  Could you please tell me how to install your script and to access it?  this looks really handy!

Thank you.

Download the script. In max, go to the maxscript menu, choose Run Script and browse to where you saved it.

max 9
Photoshop CS3
Windows XP
tin box + plug
Wacom Intuos3

THANK YOU!  That was really awesome!  I just played with it for a minute, but I can imagine some real uses for this! 

Amazing of you to share.  Thank you again!

(did you ever get to see the iron age man they found in the alps?)

Regards.