Stop Motion Effects: How To Shatter Glass

This tutorial will show you how to create the effect of a glass table smashing. It could be used for many things, and even manipulated to become a window or frame. It produces a nice effect but may take a few times to get right.

Pieces That You Need

(Orange plate used for size reference)

2-4 Plates with wedges (Having 4 just speeds it up)

A 1x3x2 window (see through)

And a bunch of small, circular see through pieces

Animating the table

Now that you have the pieces ready, it's time to animate them. This example uses a rock, but in your videos, feel free to use anything you want.

Beginning Frames

The first frames have the object (in this case a rock) falling.

Frame 1: Table Changes

Put the small see through pieces together and attach them to the wedged plates to make a shattered look. Place the object on top of the table.

Frame 2: Object comes to rest, glass scatters.

The object that fell should be nudged slightly. Take some of the "glass" out of the table and scatter it a bit from the table.

Frame 3: Glass scatters even farther.

Push the glass even farther. In the next few frames, continue this, then let it come to a rest.

In the end, you may end with something like this. The conversion caused the smoothness to lower slightly, but you can still see what it looks like.

An example of this effect used in a film is seen in the video at the top.

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