In Dreamworks Animation’s Megamind, the production faced a challenge in creating a shot where the top of a skyscraper is torn off and hurled down a city street, destroying portions of the city and creating a massive dust cloud. Development for this shot inspired a new fluid simulation framework with significant improvements in four areas: speed, visual quality, setup flexibility and artistic control. In this talk we describe the simulation algorithm and the framework that allowed it to be used in our effects pipeline.

Research Paper for Simulating Massive Dust in Megamind