VolumeBreaker

This product is download only (Please allow up to 2 business days for your download link to become available) There are no shipping fees for this product.

A 3ds Max plug-in, specifically designed to meet the needs for Roland Emmerich's $200 million motion picture “2012”, co-produced by LA based film production company Uncharted Territory.

• Movie quality destruction tool
• Hollywood production proven
• 100% Multi-threaded - Peak performance tool
• Production pipeline independent (any physics and particle engine supported)
• True, unconstrained mesh volume handling
• Native support for polygon and tri-meshes
• Generates highly optimzed, clean meshes
• True volumetric 3D breaking of virtually any 3D object
• NOT restricted to 2D planes or surfaces
• Fully automatic procedural breaking
• Works on 2D surfaces as well
• Full 64-bit support (3ds Max 64-bit)
• Advanced 3D breaking with full artistic control
• Comes with full blown ScalpelMAX functionality
  

“This new tool for 3ds Max demonstrates once more one of the many benefits that 3ds max plug-ins created by cebas have to offer.” said Sam Khorshid, Effects TD at Uncharted Territory. “volumeBreaker was specifically coded to our needs for the '2012' Project and yet it turned out to be a real Swiss Army knife for so many of our F/X shots. This tool was not only helpful in destroying simple geometry - I could just throw it at a complex building with hundred of thousands of polygons and guess what? - it just worked!"
cebas is listening to users' suggestions on their own and other public forums and has added functionality based on those user requests. volumeBreaker includes the following features:

True 3D Volume Breaking

Test Animation by Sam Khorshid

True 3D Volume Breaking

The development of a true 3D volume breaking tool was driven by the need for artists around the world to have access to an easy to use and, more importantly, fast tool to prepare any 3D mesh for destruction effects or animations. The solution is volumeBreaker's highly accurate 3D volume breaking tool that allows the destruction of virtually any 3D object into individual elements while retaining the original object's surface and details, including UV texture coordinates.

100% Multi-Threaded Peak Performance

The ability to use all available processing power offers volumeBreaker users creative and interactive control of the object destruction parameters.

Unconstrained 3D Object Destruction

volumeBreaker can be applied to virtually any 3D object in 3ds Max and it will be re-created and restructured as a true filled 3D volumetric object! The volume breaking process can be a complex and time consuming task, especially when clean objects and perfect surface reconstruction is needed. Proprietary algorithms are used to even handle "loose" or "lazy" 3D models that may be created by inexperienced users or by importing 3D models from CAD applications.
Thanks to it's advanced algorithms and complete scalability, volumeBreaker handles the task of breaking an object at interactive rates, allowing the user to adjust every aspect of the 3D volume breaking process.
Due to its 3D Volumetric nature, volumeBreaker can easily create hundred of millions of triangles in no time at all.

True 64-Bit Support

Besides 32-bit , volumeBreaker runs perfectly as a true 64-bit application with 3ds Max 64-bit, allowing to process nearly an unlimited amount of polygons with extreme memory footprints.

Perfect Detail and Hull Preservation

Volume breaking an object is mathematically challenging as it needs to solve thousands or even million of 3D boolean operations to perfectly fill an "empty shell" model with chunks or debris and all this has to be achieved without modifying the original hull or surface of the 3D model. Re-creating, cutting or moving vertices are all operations you can do to a 3D object that will in the end sacrifice the surface quality, texture quality or it might result in the loss of general details that have been modeled on the surface of an object. This will not happen when using volumeBreaker! Surface detail and textures will stay the same - applying the volumeBreaker modifier to an object will appear like it did not touch it at all except for the extra object elements created inside of the object's volume.

Automatic Hollow Object Detection

Modeling 3D objects is a creative process and there is a wide variety of tools used to model an object. Every artists has his favourite tools and creates complex geometry the way he likes. Sometimes models are pure fantasy, sometimes models are of real world objects - both types of 3D objects can be handled by volumeBreaker, even watertight objects with nested structures and hollow interiors are handled perfectly by volumeBreaker. If, for any reason, a 3D object might not behave as expected it can be easily adjusted or fixed thanks to the high speed and scalability of the volume breaking process.

Automatic Mass Friendly Control

Modern movie plots seem to require an ever increasing number of objects to be destroyed per second. Regardless of the plot or the Director's wishes, volumeBreaker offers easy and simple to adjust controls to dissect any 3D object at interactive rates. This ease of use makes it possible to handle masses of different 3D objects in a short time frame.

Full Parametric Volumetric Control

So called "hero shots", need special attention to detail and a more artistic approach to destruction than simple distant mass destruction scenes. volumeBreaker offers a fully parametric method of defining the volume breaking process allowing the user to stay in control but still have the advantage of easy, hassle free adjustment of the breaking process.

Uncompromising Control

The highest level of volume breaking control is offered when the user adds 3D control textures to define the density and area of volume debris inside an object. A manual adjustment mode exists as well to achieve absolute control over position and density of the volume breaking process. By using individually modeled and placed filler volumes the density and size of the chunks can be controlled easily and precisely!

Standalone Performance - Free Choices

The output created by volumeBreaker is a standard 3ds Max mesh with properly defined mesh elements in it, any 3ds Max compatible Physics Engine or Particle system (built-in or 3rd party) may process the volume broken mesh and create amazing destruction animations. Further modification of the volume broken mesh with standard 3ds Max tools is possible as well.

Comprehensive Package

volumeBreaker was designed from the ground up, based on the features that users requested most for the "2012" project and includes functions that can be used in a wide range of every day jobs as well. A full license of ScalpelMAX is included with volumeBreaker, which adds an extra value of US$150 alone. ScalpelMAX is a production proven, precise mesh cutting tool which has been successfully selling for 3ds Max since the old 3D STUDIO DOS Release 4 days!

Supported Platforms:
3ds Max 2010 32-bit and 64-bit
3ds Max 2009 32-bit and 64-bit
3ds Max 2008 32-bit and 64-bit

This product is available as DOWNLOAD only