Cracking glass effect

[JazzyDJ]

I'm using Vegas and have AE as well. The effect I need is to have the screen very slowly crack up like glass would. It has to be a delayed cracking though. Then at the end of the cracking, a few pieces flip over and lightly fall to the ground to reveal a new background mask where the piece just broke off.

Anyone know how to do this? I would think Shatter would be enough but the problem is it doesn't show the crack lines very well, and they need to slowly animate from the point of impact to the edges of the screen.

[Synanimax]

I just download Vegas pro 9 and also download this effect "NewBlue 3D Explosions for Vegas". i found cracking screen effect.
i think we need create a glass picture before we apply the effect.

[JazzyDJ]

Never heard of that. Does it crack and animate lines from the center outward?

[blabbler]

shatter is entirely capable of doing this...

i would start by animating the radius of the force over a custom shape map to make the cracks move outward... you do have two forces to play with, you could use the first one to expand the cracks enough to be visible, and the second to break them apart. or just keyframe the gravity and viscosity to get the desired effect.

[JazzyDJ]

shatter is entirely capable of doing this...

i would start by animating the radius of the force over a custom shape map to make the cracks move outward... you do have two forces to play with, you could use the first one to expand the cracks enough to be visible, and the second to break them apart. or just keyframe the gravity and viscosity to get the desired effect.

Thank you for your reply. I played around with it some and tried to do a little of what you suggested. Now I'm a complete noob with this so please bear with me since I know nothing about custom maps. What I did was tried to use both forces and just use keyframes to slow down the animation, but it didn't work. The layer breaks refuses to delay and breaks up as soon within a second of increasing the depth in the first force. I seem to have no control over the shatter. I can delay it's start, but once it starts it wants to just break apart and explode on it's own timing. With the 2nd force it only broke apart more on the right side of the screen (not what I was really looking for). What am I doing wrong?

[blabbler]

right, you've got a few things you can play with. you can change the strength of the force, which will determine how fast the fragments fly apart.
you've also got viscocity, which is like air resistance, so with a low force and a high viscocity, the fragments will only move a very short distance before they come to a halt.
you can also animate the radius of the force.
the depth of the force you'll probably want to leave alone (this is the centre of the force sphere in z-space)
you've got to imagine each force as a sphere with falloff, so the force is strongest at the centre of the sphere, weakest at the periphery, and nonexistent outside the sphere.

i would try start with force 1 at zero radius, low strength, turn the viscocity (under physics) up a bit.

position both forces in the centre of your layer

animate the radius of force 1 from zero up to something sufficient to cover the whole layer.

if you animate the radius slowly, it will crack from the centre to the edges.

the fragments velocity will be overpowered by the viscocity, so they just stop and hang in midair after a short while (tweak the strength of force 1 and the viscocity to get this looking like small cracks)

now simultaneously animate in force 2 and bring down the viscocity to get the desired shatter.

you'll need to play with the gravity too to get the fragments moving where you want. for the initial cracking, it would probably be best to have zero gravity so the fragments just drift apart a few pixels.

[JazzyDJ]

Thank you again blabbler. With your tips I was able to get the first stage of the effect and have the cracking go out to my satisfaction. The viscosity was the key. However I'm still have a bit of difficulty getting the exact timing down (it animates too fast despite my keyframe placement), but I can tweak that in my editor.

The big problem I'm facing now is getting Force 2 to work. Because gravity is universal and the forces only have Depth, Radius, and Strength. So while I want to have a shard or two (at this point I'd settle for whatever of them) from the force 2 radius fall downward to the ground without much (if any) outward G-forces. I tried to key frame gravity and such relevent settings but it doesn't work because it wants to do the same thing to force-1 (beings physics are universal to both force-1 and force-2).

So to sum it up... Force-1 looks great. Got the cracking going outward and staying without falling. But when I go to force-2, it wants to explode outward and if I change the physics setting (like gravity/viscocity etc) it changes force-1 too.

I've made Force-2 a much smaller radius so that just a smaller whole will be made for the character to peep through. In order for it to look right with the delayed vibe I'm going for, I need the pieces to just fall downard and not explode. I know I'm repeating myself but I'm just trying to be as thorough as possible.

Anyway what's the solution for this?

[blabbler]

you could precompose the cracked layer and use another instance of shatter to break it apart further.

or bear in mind you can use negative forces, and can move the force spheres.
you could do the initial crack with high viscocity. then keyframe the viscocity down quickly (the cracked shards will stay put, until force 2 sets them in motion again) then use the second force to push or pull them off the screen. use maximum radius and start with the force position of screen, then gradually move it over the layer.

[JazzyDJ]

Thanks for your help, blabbler! I used the pre-comp then applied shatter over again in a new comp as you suggested and I've got it looking half way decent now. It's not exactly what my original idea imagined but it does the job close enough to satisfaction. (Originally I wanted to have one big shard flip out and over to it's other side while dangling to the ground. Imagine hearing ice drop into a glass. That's the sound it would have made with the 1 or 2 shard idea.) I'm very pleased to have gotten past this part, and it's all thanks to your help.

[darkargasio]

the best solution is the boris continuum complete plug in for after effects called 3d shatter,it uses the open gl accelleration to give you a really fast-to-render shatter effects which includes the basic 3d effect.it works just like to normal shatter fx but is much,much better.