Brick Fracture operator

The Brick Fracture operator allows you to slice particle meshes into brick-like patterns.

Each fracture mesh will be turned into a new particle.


Bricks Rollout

Brick Fracture

  • Enable/Disable: this checkbutton controls whether the brick fracture algorithm will be executed on input particles. It exists as an easy way to enable/disable the algorithm, when tweaking settings (instead of disabling the whole flow to reduce time between setting changes).

Orientation

  • XY/YX/ZX/XZ/YZ/ZY: the dominant alignment axes of the slice planes.

Scale

  • Scale mult: the scale multiplier to apply to the slice planes.

Display

  • Show slice planes: controls whether brick slice planes will be drawn in the view.

Meshes

  • Preserve normals: when enabled, existing surface normals will be made explicit and preserved during the operation.

Uniqueness

  • Seed: the seed value for all varied parameters.

Bricks

  • Enable Length: controls whether slices will be made along the particle’s length.

  • Length: the distance between each length-wise slice.

  • Variation %: the per-particle percentage of variation to apply.
  • Offset: the offset applied to length-wise slices, per row.

  • Variation %: the per-particle percentage of variation to apply.
  • Enable Width: controls whether slices will be made along the particle’s width.

  • Width: the distance between each width-wise slice.

  • Variation %: the per-particle percentage of variation to apply.
  • Offset: the offset applied to width-wise slices, per row.

  • Variation %: the per-particle percentage of variation to apply.
  • Enable Height: controls whether slices will be made along the particle’s height.

  • Height: the distance between each height-wise slice.

  • MatID override: controls whether a custom material ID will be baked into brick meshes.

  • MatID min/max: the range of random material ID values to bake into brick meshes.

  • Custom Float Data enable: controls whether a custom float value will be assigned to brick meshes.

  • Channel: the custom float channel where the value will be assigned.

  • Value: the custom float value to assign.

Alternating rows

Alternating row settings are special shrinkage values you can activate on specific row intervals, to add extra variation to the overall brick pattern.

  • Enable alternating rows: enables alternating row settings.

  • Every nth: controls how often a row will adopt the shrinkage settings.

  • Len/Wid/Hei shrink: controls the scaling factor of length/width/height slices on alternating rows.

  • MatID override: controls whether a custom material ID will be baked into alternating row meshes.

  • MatID min/max: the range of random material ID values to bake into alternating row meshes.

  • Custom Float Data enable: controls whether a custom float value will be assigned to alternating row meshes.

  • Channel: the custom float channel where the value will be assigned.

  • Value: the custom float value to assign.

Mortar

When Mortar is enabled, extra slices will be made between bricks, to simulate mortar packed between them.

  • Mortar enable: enables mortar slices.

  • Thickness: controls the overall thickness of the mortar effect.

  • MatID override: controls whether a custom material ID will be baked into mortar meshes.

  • MatID min/max: the range of random material ID values to bake into mortar meshes.

  • Custom Float Data enable: controls whether a custom float value will be assigned to mortar meshes.

  • Channel: the custom float channel where the value will be assigned.

  • Value: the custom float value to assign.

Location

  • Particle TM: the starting point of the slice plane pattern will originate at each individual particle’s transform.

  • Object TM: the starting point of the slice plane pattern will originate at specified object transforms.

  • Input object list: the list of input objects to use for slice plane placement.

Offset
  • X/Y/Z: controls how much position offset (in local transform space) to add to the input transforms.

Size

  • Length/Width/Height: the overall size of the slice plane bounding box.

Slice planes will only appear on frames where particles enter the Brick operator for the first time.


Slices Rollout

Holes

  • Cap holes: controls whether slices will be capped with new faces.
Material
  • Override cap MatID: controls whether cap faces will be given a material ID override.

  • ID: the cap face material ID value.

UVs
  • Generate cap UVs: controls whether UVW coordinates will be generated on new cap faces.

  • Normalize: controls whether cap UVW coordinates will be normalized.

  • Size: the size of the cap face UVW coordinates.

Selection
  • Select cap faces: controls whether new cap faces will be flagged for selection.

Optimize

  • Optimize slice borders: controls whether slice borders will be optimized, removing things like extraneous vertices along parallel edges.