This is another shot from my thesis – A projectile crashes into the wall leaving a gaping hole with smoke billowing outward.

The brief first part of the shot was done by Chris Messineo, with whom I collaborated with on the thesis.

All of the compositing was done in After Effects. The effects are a combination of live action elements and CG elements. The wall was shattered using a plugin in Maya called Shatter Plus (the best one I’ve used so far). I used another tool that parents the shattered pieces onto particles at the center of each fragment. I wrote some particle expressions to control the behavior to simulate Rigid Bodies. I also created a couple passes of billowing smoke in Houdini.

Tools Used:
Maya, Houdini, After Effects