In this very early test animation, there was only one basic source of light, minimal texturing of the structure (though you can see the beginnings of images I’m embedding into the walls). And there was not yet any exterior environment which would contibute color and a sense of space.

At this point it seemed I’d worked interminably to construct the structure, get it broken down into pieces, and get them all to come together, fitting perfectly, and to fly apart, leaving a seamless structure at the beginning and end. That’s just the beginning.

I also had to painstaking craft UV maps, which would allow the textures I am creating to map seamlessly across the break points. In this way, for example, the image you see in the corridor to the right of the intact structure will crack along with the walls of the corridor. Pieces of the images thus adhering to the walls will fly into space with the broken parts, and return with the whole. Yeah, you cant really see that in this crude animation, but you can see the wall with the image crack in the block on the right side of this page.

Anyway, hopefully you get the main idea. This is a test with a fairly stationary viewpoint, to observe the breakup from a particular angle. Much will change.

If you observe closely, you can see that the pieces still move right through one another, and that will have to be fixed with careful hand animation.