Cineversity

I have a relatively low-poly battle tank mesh that I want to morph into another shape. My strategy is to use the Explosion FX deformer to break up the polygons, and then have the Plain effector expand and scale them into a “cloud” of data (see attached). In the confusion, I can transition to my new form. However, I have discovered this is a very inefficient way to do it. The assembly is extremely twitchy and crashes more often than not. I am theorizing that this may be partly due to the fact that the low-poly tank (which I got from Turbosquid) seems to have a lot of extra vertices that I can’t get rid of, and these overwhelm the deformer/effectors causing the crashes. As I have seen this kind of tranforming-morphing effect on many Cinema show reels, I assume there is a better way to do it. If you can point me in the right direction, I am sure I can find my way through. As it is, I’m lost in the debris (almost literally).

Hi mford610,

Typically this is done with the PBlurb node in Thinking Particles, please have a look at the attached scene file.
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/T7FhqCQKT6xvvol1ObmpsbnibF3zwx5HaaI0H0mfJ0y

To get rid of vertices/points, just use: Mesh> Commands> Optimize
Make certain that the Threshold of the tool is not larger than your smallest edge, etc. (Use the Cogwheel on the right while calling up the command for more options)

I can take a look at the tank file, let me know if you like to have an upload link, or perhaps share it with either Dropbox, Amazon or Google files.

All the best