Destroying Things with Force Fields in Houdini

Download Houdini File: Destruction_Force_Field.hiplc

The red gradient coloring represents where the force field is positioned.

In this tutorial video, I create an additional geometry and populate all the points with force vectors that I use to influence the destruction simulation I have setup. It’s true, you don’t really need to use an additional geometry to control the destruction blast, everything can be done inside the dopnet without the need of using additional geometry nodes. However it’s a lot easier to edit the force field geometry and use it to tweak the blast force in the destruction.

Force Field used to influence the RBD Simulation in Houdini

Visualizing Force Vectors acting upon Fractured RBD Pieces in the simulation playback (Houdini)

Force Fields

In the video, I demonstrate how to control where the blast force is directed towards. By controlling the direction of the force vectors in the Force Field geometry, I can implicitly influence the destruction simulation.

The RBD (rigid body dynamics) Solver calculates how the fractured wall structure will break according to forces that are applied to it, like the gravity that gets added to the simulation. And of course our Force Field that contains force vectors that gets added to the resulting force calculated from the RBD Solver.