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Looking for the Blender 2.49 version of this tutorial? Check out the archive.

NOTE: In this tutorial, just like nearly all of my tutorials, I have provided what I call keystrokes lines. These are highlighted throughout the tutorial and are meant to allow you to see the actual keystrokes that I went through in order to get the results I get in the tutorial. More advanced users should be able to go through a tutorial without the keystrokes lines assuming I have explained myself sufficiently.

 

            For a while I have planned on getting a new tutorial that was going to make better the ideas I had with the dissolving tutorial. This sort of goes over that, but is not really what I had in mind. In any case the object in this tutorial explodes apart more than it dissolves, plus I let you guys know how to do it all in reverse so that it looks like it is assembling together rather than exploding. The steps taken here are very similar to a video I made recently --> http://www.darkscarab.com/animations/view.php?title=Video%20Tutorial%20Introduction

 

Disassemble

            Let's start by opening up Blender. If you have the default cube, you are in luck, today we are going to be using it. If you don't have it, add a cube to your scene now. If you want to use a different mesh, feel free to do so. The object you use will not matter so long as it is a mesh. With the cube I am going to subdivide it a few times so that when we make this fall apart there will be more pieces.

 

            Select the cube, Go to Edit Mode, Select All (A), Subdivide (3x)

 

 

            Now that we have that all done, we are going to go back into Object Mode. In order to make our cube fall apart we are going to need to use the particle system. With that said, go to the particle settings and click on the plus button to add a particle system to the cube. There are a few settings we need to change before we move on. In the Emission section change Lifetime to 100. In the Velocity section change Normal to 0.000 and Random to 2.000. In the Rotation section change the Angular Velocity amount (setting below the spin button) to 0.500. Lastly, in the Physics section we need to change Size to 1.000 or the faces will not be the correct size.

 

            Object Mode, Go to Particle Settings, Add Particle System to Cube, Change Lifetime to 100, Normal to 0.000, Random to 2.000, Angular Velocity Amount to 0.500, and Size to 1.000

 

 

            All of those changes will help in making the cube explode in a more random manner. At this point we just have particles emitting out of the cube. In order to make the cube look like it is exploding, or falling apart, we are going to add a modifier to it. Open up the modifier settings and in the Add Modifier dropdown select Explode. If you test it out now by hitting play in the timeline, you should see all of the faces of the cube fall off of it.

 

            Select the Cube, Go to Modifier Settings, Add Explode Modifier

 

 

            As a final note on making an object disassemble, you may find that you do not want the particles themselves to appear in your render. To solve this problem, you can go to the particle settings and there should be a section labeled Render. Change the Halo setting to None. This will make it so that only the Emitter will be seen when you render it.

 

 

Assembling

            We just tore the cube apart, now you want to put it back together? As you have probably determined by now to get it to put itself together we have to make our animation go in reverse. At this point in time I have been trying to use the F-Curve Editor to get the particles to play in reverse, but as of yet (Blender 2.5 Alpha 0) I have not been able to figure it out. I only wish there are more documentation at this point so I could know for sure whether or not I can do it, but I will just continue as we did in 2.49. (If we are beyond 2.5 Alpha 0 and I have not updated this, feel free to yell at me)

 

            Anyways, since we cannot use F-Curves to reverse the particle motion, we have to play the whole entire animation in reverse. When you do that, you can then take that animation to use in a final animation, I won't go over that though. So rather than changing the Blender layout to Animation as I would have liked to do, we are going to go to the Video Editing layout. You can change the layout with the dropdown list directly to the right of the help menu. After you have done that, click on the Add menu in the sequencer window and select scene. This puts our current scene into the sequencer for us.

 

            Change the layout to Video Editing

 

 

            Now we just need to flip the scene strip in reverse so it looks like the particles are assembling together rather than falling apart. In the right side of the sequencer window, you should see a bunch of different settings for the strip. If you scroll down in that sidebar, you will eventually come across the Filter section. In there you should be able to find a checkbox labeled Backwards. Check that box and your strip will play in reverse.

 

            Go to Filter section in the Sequencer sidebar, Turn on Backwards

 

 

            As a final note, if any of you know what I meant by putting the particle system in reverse with the F-Curve editor and knows how to do it in 2.5, I would really like to know (It's really been bugging me since I wrote the 2.49 version). Otherwise, I plan on updating this tutorial when the next alpha version comes out, in the hopes that I can figure it out, and that it is possible at that time.