Collapsing Animations

[StefanC]

Hey guys,

Since ep2 came out and everyone knew about the collapsing building scene in it I always wanted to recreate something like that. however from what I have heard back then is that its quite stressful to source so its not like you can make a map full of collapsing buildings. So I am wondering if its possible to make
a building in 3ds max, using reactor to get the collapsing building animation (using pro cutter to get the house in several pieces) and then in Hammer make like a few hit boxes that if they receive a certain amount of damage the animation will be triggered. Also and this is most used in games:
if you have a character they most of the time put all the animations in one, for example frame 0 - 40 is normal walk cycle, 41 to 55 is a jump animation etc etc
now is it the same thing with source and if so can I like make frame 0 to 80 the collapsing building and like from 81 - 100 a door opening ?

to put things clear :
- A house with 4 pillars in the front (support beams)
receive a certain amount of damage if so the animation is triggered
- Can I put the collapsing animation and the door opening and closing
in one file ?
- And the biggest of all, is this possible ?

now I know there are 2 collapsing building scenes in ep2 one with the sawmill
and one earlier in the house.
I know these are predetermined and I want them to be triggered if there is enough damaged caused to it.

I have been 3d modeling for 5 years now so creating the house, textureing and animating it won't be a problem.

 

[Krynn72]

I'm not too familiar with how Source works, but in most engines I've used, you'd need some sort of rig to make that happen. Since you're just running a physics simulation on vertices in 3DSMax, there is no way that I am aware of to bake that kind of animation to bones, which would then have to be skinned to the corresponding chunks of building, which could then be brought into source as an animation.

I think you would have to apply a bone to each chunk of the destroyed building, and then hand-animate it to collapse in order to do what you want. You'll also probably need to model a solid, non-destructible version of the building that is there all the time right up until the building takes enough damage, then do a swap for the destroyed version that has the animation.

Its a LOT of work. I had to do something similar, but with using physics in-game. It still took me 2 weeks working full time to figure out how best to do it in our engine. Figuring out a way to actually have it animated is going to be a huge task I'm thinking.

 

[Barnz]

http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=741440