Dynamic text shatter tutorial in Maya 2011

Open Maya 2011

Create a Polygon Plane and press R scale it larger. 

In the menu tool bar go to Create – Text options box—copy image options. Be sure to select Poly—Triangles—Count. I set the count to 150 but you can set it to whatever works best for the type of font you are using. Press Apply.

Your text will be separated into two parts. First is the outline of the text. Second is the inside triangulated polygon surface. Open the Outliner found in Window on the menu tool bar. Then select the top text. Press Delete.

Select the next layer of text in the Outliner and press W to move the text to the center of the stage. 

With the text still selected go to the menu tool bar and select Edit—Ungroup. 

Go into the Dynamics menu tool bar and select Effects—Create Shatter Options Box. With the Text still selected press apply with the options in the image.

1.    Shard Count=5

2.    Extrude Shards=0

3.    Speed Value=11

4.    Post Operation=Shapes

5.    Triangulate Surface

6.    Link to shards

7.    Verbose mode

This image shows how the text is now broken up into many separate pieces.

 

With the Text selected from the Outliner go to the Polygon menu tool bar and select Edit Mesh—Extrude. 

From the right hand layer editor type in .5 in the Local Translate Z options box.

If you pull up one shard you can see that each shard is one solid piece 

With the ground plane selected go back in Dynamics menu tool bar select Soft/Rigid Bodies—Create Passive Rigid Body. 

In the Outliner select the shards in the first letter “T” and go to the menu tool bar select Soft/Rigid Bodies—Create Active Rigid Body Options box. I set the Bounciness to .3 and the Damping to .1. But you can play with it to get the desired affect you are looking for. Click Apply. Continue this with each letter individually. 

In the Outliner select all the Shards and go to menu tool bar. Select Fields—Gravity. 

Select the Ground Plane and press W to move it down. 

At the bottom in the animation settings click Animation Preferences icon at the bottom right hand corner. Be sure that Playback Speed is set to Play every frame.

Set the End time and End Playback time to 100 or however long you want your animation to last. 

Preview to make sure it works.

When previewing if you select a shard go the Attributes Editor option box on the right and select the Rigid Solver tab. In the Rigid Solver States you have the option to save the animation in the RAM by selecting Cache Data. If you want to reset the data just click Delete Cache.

After you have viewed the animation and you go back to the first frame you may get a warning message. This generally can be fixed by changing the Rigid Body Attributes of the affected shards. 

Add some lights and color then render. Congrats.