Pulldownit 6.6: Rubble, With Revisions

For those who don’t know the tool: Pulldownit is Thinkinetic’s fracture-generation and rigid-body dynamics plug-in for Autodesk Maya. It turns geometry into breakable objects, then calculates their transition from architecture to a considerably less useful arrangement of architecture.

A little less apocalypse

Version 6.6 introduces Eraser, an interactive re-shatter mode for reducing fragmentation in selected areas or removing cracking regions completely. When the note says “less destruction”, you can now comply without submitting a photograph of the building before you started. Adjustments can be simulated immediately, undone or reverted to the original breakage.

Chipping on Borders takes the opposite approach, generating small debris along visually selected boundaries, including internal borders around holes. The fragments detach when dynamics are computed. Think of it as distressed furniture finishing for people whose furniture is a municipal landmark. Shatter It also gains Select Source Node, allowing an existing breakage to use different source geometry or serve as the starting point for another destruction effect.

Regret, accelerated

Thinkinetic reports threefold faster re-shattering and fourfold faster Undo Last Re-Shatter. Giving second thoughts the larger speed boost shows a touching understanding of production. These improvements concern fracture editing and reversal, rather than an across-the-board acceleration of the dynamics solver. Hardware and scene specifications are not supplied with the comparisons, so the multipliers remain vendor figures.

Version 6.6 builds on the non-destructive workflow introduced in 6.5, keeping the useful distinction between destroying the asset and destroying your options.

Break the building, keep the UVs

The fix list addresses altered UVs, unwanted faces on low-poly corona-like models, stalls at 1,024 fragments and missing Draft-mode shatter points. The building may lose its structural integrity; its UV layout has other commitments. Subsequent shattering should also stop overwriting the original breakage, while Refresh From Source and Undo Last now respect Detach Sub-meshes.

Collision and cluster fixes cover Cracker interactions with single rigid bodies, collisions against refreshed clustered fracture bodies, disconnected fragments after cluster reduction and residual break energy on reduced cluster borders. Edge Fracture corrections address uneven chipping on tessellated meshes and unwanted inner-edge chipping. Relative to Mass is also corrected after cluster resizing and Edge Fracture. Check those behaviours against existing shots before changing a production installation.

The demolition permit

Pulldownit 6.6 is available through licensed users’ accounts. The download page lists free Maya 6.x builds for Maya 2022–2027 on Windows and macOS. Annual Pro licences cost €290 node-locked or €360 floating, with tax treatment unspecified on the price list. Floating licensing requires an internet connection to the licence server; an in-house Windows server is offered from three seats. Even the rubble needs to phone the office.