The Megamind FX team was challenged with the destruction of Metro City, which was populated with a mixture of hand-modeled and procedurally generated buildings. Bidding the film told us that that over a third of all effects in the film would be destruction work, revealing that we needed a system that was controllable, easy to set up and use, and simple to pass on downstream. To meet this challenge we created a demolition system unique in that artists can precisely control how debris pieces are broken apart using tools they are already familiar with. This system consists of three key components: Demolition, Dust, and the overall Pipeline.

Research Paper for Destroying Metro City: An Artist-Friendly and Efficient Demolition Pipeline for “Megamind”