• Introduction
• Cloner object
• Effectors - Overview
• Group effector
• Delay effector
• Formula effector
• Inheritance effector
• Random effector
• Shader effector
• Sound effector
• Spline effector
• Step effector
• Target effector
• Time effector
• Linear Clone Tool, Radial Clone Tool & Grid Clone Tool
• Matrix object
• Fracture object
• Instance object
• Text object
• Tracer
• Spline mask
• Displace Deformer
• Extrude deformer
• Spline wrap
• Cache tag / Baking animations
• MoGraph shaders
• Manual and Tutorials
• Goodies / Samples Scenes Etc
• XPresso for MoGraph
• Release 10 and MoGraph
• Conclusion

Fracture object

The fracture object is essentially a container object much like using a parent null. Except with the Fracture object, child objects are treated as clones and if any of the objects have been disconnected with the disconnect command then each disconnected polygon, polygon group or spline segment can be treated as an individual clone if you want. Primitive objects like cylinders can have their end caps treated as separate objects. Primitive cubes with the separate surface option can have each face treated as a separate object. Text splines under an Extrudenurbs object can have the caps and extrusion treated as separate objects as well. We will illustrate some of this below.

What all this means is that you can use an effector to manipulate the child objects of the Fracture object in the same way that a cloner object works with a child object. Typically making them break apart in various ways depending on what mode you select. I found the description in the manual a bit vague on all this and had to play around with it to understand what it did.

Some example images and animations will better explain what the Fracture Object does.

Straight Mode

The 2 extruded splines are child objects of a Fracture object. The pulsating is generated by a formula effector placed in the effector field off the Fracture object. With the straight mode, the 2 extruded splines are treated as 2 objects.

Explode Segments Mode

In this mode, if the child objects are made up of segments e.g. extruded text spline then the caps and extrusion are treated as separate objects

This effect can't easily be achieved with a cloner object or not without destroying the objects. One thing I didn't see mentioned in the manual is what happens to the applied textures in this mode. Once exploded the caps of the ExtrudeNurbs objects take on the colour defined by the colour on the transform tab of the Fracture object. Fine if this is what you want to do but I could imagine times when you want different colours on the caps and extrusion or even the same colour, shader or texture map. I did try using separate materials with selections like "C1" and "C2" but this didn't work in this mode. Interesting that in straight mode this did work. Change to explode segment mode and the "C1" and "C2" material selection is overridden. Placing the material on the Fracture object is a partial work around but not that useful when you have multiple child objects of the Fracture object.

Explode and Connect Mode

In this mode the individual letters are treated as separate objects.

Explode Segments Mode - Polygons Disconnected

In this example a "Disconnect" command was run on a sphere. The Fracture object treats each polygon as a separate object.

Also check out the tutorial 5 animation further on in the review. This uses the fracture object.

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