Skip to content
Forged/Docs/Forged ImageProducts ↗

Disintegrate

How to take a subject apart on one clock.

BS_Disintegrate

Mask-driven disintegration, automatic and modular: wire the plate and a subject alpha, set start + duration (or key `progress`), pick the front (directional / edge-in / core-out / blotch / spread) — the body erodes behind an organic front, chunks tear off and tumble, dust drifts away in the body's own colours, a hot rim glows, and the background is revealed (a wired bg, else an inpaint estimate). Every stage is its own output layer for grading.

Getting started

  1. Wire the plate into in and a subject alpha into matte (Crucible, roto, a key — any alpha).
  2. Set start and duration, or key progress directly.
  3. Pick the front: directional for a sweep, edge_in / core_out for silhouette-driven, blotch or spread_rate for infection.
  4. Turn the media passes on only if you want them — smoke, embers and shimmer all default off.

How it works

One field decides everything. T(x) is the infection time of each pixel: the frame at which the front reaches it. The body erodes behind it, chunks release from it, dust is born in the band on it, the rim glows by age since it, and the background is revealed where it has passed. Because there is one clock, the stages cannot disagree with each other.

The particle work rides a sim spine: seeded, frame-recursive, snapshotted — the same range gives the same dust every time, whether you scrubbed there or played there.

The stages

StageWhat it makesLayer
FrontT(x) and the active banddisint.front, disint.band
BodyThe eroding subject, optionally smeared before releasedisint.body
ChunksVoronoi pieces that tear off, tumble, shrink and fadedisint.chunks
DustA real 2D particle sim, coloured from the plate at birthdisint.dust, motion
MediaSmoke, embers (additive), heat shimmer, the rim glowdisint.smoke, disint.embers, disint.glow
RevealThe background behind what has gonedisint.reveal

Known edges