Joints and debris
Impact Joint
Section titled “Impact Joint”An Impact Joint connects two pieces, or a piece and the world. Connect it to the Impact Solver’s Joints input.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Type | Hinge, Slider, Ball, Spring or Weld. |
| Shard A | A fracture shard driven by the joint (must belong to the fractured source). |
| Shard B | The second shard. Empty: Shard A is jointed to the fixed world. |
| Pivot | An object (usually an Empty) whose location is the joint point and whose orientation gives the axis. Empty: the point between the two shards, or Shard A’s centre for a world joint. |
| Axis | The hinge or slider axis: the pivot’s local axis, or the world axis without a pivot. |
| Swing, Twist | The half-angle of the cone the joint axis may swing within, and how far (each way) the shard may turn about the joint axis. |
| Limit, Lower, Upper | Restricts the hinge angle or slider travel. |
| Motor, Speed, Strength | Drives the hinge or slider at a target speed. Strength is the most force or torque, in multiples of Shard A’s weight. |
| Frequency (Hz), Damping Ratio | For a spring: oscillations per second, and damping from 0 (rings forever) to 1 (no overshoot). |
| Softness | Lets ball, hinge, slider and fixed attachments give a little. 0 is rigid. |
| Breakable, Break Strength | The joint snaps when the load passes the strength, in multiples of Shard A’s weight. Off, it never breaks. |
Impact Debris
Section titled “Impact Debris”An Impact Debris node spawns chips, dust and sparks when bonds break or pieces hit something.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Splinters Per Snap | 4 | Secondary GPU rubble particles spawned per broken glue bond. |
| Debris Style | Concrete | The material the debris looks like and how it is shaded. |
| Impact Debris | on | Ejects secondary chips and dust when fast shards hit colliders or the ground. |
| Impact Speed Thresh (m/s) | 3 | Minimum approach speed to trigger chip ejection. |
| Chips Per Impact | 4 | Chips ejected per high-speed impact. |
| Air Drag | 1.5 | Drag on airborne dust and particulates. |
| Wake Suction | 2.5 | A slipstream that pulls dust into the wake of falling chunks. |
Showing debris
Section titled “Showing debris”By default debris is drawn as points. Instance Debris on Active Mesh (Solver panel) shows the debris as instances of the active mesh instead, so a small rock model can stand in for chips and gravel.
Dust and smoke
Section titled “Dust and smoke”Impact debris can raise dust and smoke through a Blaze solver. See Particles and gas together. The Demolition Dust template shows it.
Keyframes
Section titled “Keyframes”The Solver panel’s Keyframes section turns a simulation into ordinary animation:
- Bake writes the simulation to object keyframes (location and quaternion rotation) on the shards.
- Clear removes them and restores the rest poses.
The keyframes are ordinary Blender animation, so you can edit them with the usual tools.