Building destruction

[cteno4]

So I’ve been thinking of making a Godzilla scene to place behind Ttrak modules. It’s pretty cramped to put goji directly on a Ttrak module (even a 14”deep double) with track that I’m thinking a rear scene may be good. We now routinely set up in rectangle layouts rather than single table up and back layouts, so we have the space behind modules for this.

 

I’m thinking about how to go about destroying structures. When I was a kid we use to do damaged tanks and vehicles using needle nose pliers to good effect to warp and rip off pieces. But most structure plastic is pretty thick and larger sections would be needed to be destroyed.
 

Thinking the best approach to make a break line is maybe use a 0.5mm drill to perforate a jagged break like to break things up along. Then maybe hack at the jagged edge with light kicks with the rototool with a very big toothed burr bit or some small hand rough hand rasps to randomize the edge breakage. 
 

Hot knife passed thru my mind but it will create the more melted look (which would be good for atomic breath blast destruction areas) that would not look properly shattered. But it may work to add some gouges and scars here and there.

 

I did pick up one of the damaged outland high rises to look at and play with. I have a few outland duplicates I also picked up on sale to experiment on. I’ll have to probably go back in and add a lot of bent up rebar and I beams as well on broken wall and floor edges if I want to looking right.

 

I would expect some stuff out there from wargaming but most of what I’ve run across looking around is not modern building destruction (modern buildings fall apart differently and different shaped than old stone buildings) and also usually tends to be larger scale than 1/150 for most of the examples I saw. May try looking at some of the goji movies and freeze frame on some of the crumbling buildings, but I expect may need a different look as there it’s about the movement and details not as important as the movement and camera is never on any one spot very long. A diorama though is a freeze frame on one point in time so I expect detail will be needed to look right. Maybe I’ll have to look for demolition pictures!

 

If anyone has ideas for ways to damage/destroy these buildings please yell!

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Cat]

There is a wide variety of modern 1/144 destroyed buildings out there for mecha dioramas.  Even Outland has a good selection of them!

[bc6]

Jeff I think I have that same destroyed building from Outlands too Its a nice building. I think getting some nippers and going at it would be a good way to destroy a building.

Edited December 4 by bc6

[tossedman]

Jeff, looks like it might be time for you to get into 3D printing. Found this STL on Etsy, There are more. I googled destroyed building STL.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1146762408/3d-stl-file-model-destroyed-building-1

 

There are some on Thingiverse as well. https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=destroyed+building&page=1

 

Cheers eh,

 

Todd

Edited December 5 by tossedman

[cteno4]

Thanks Todd, I had seen a few of those files in my looking around. Thinking I want to do this by hand, not really into trying to 3D print it. But these files are good ideas of destruction!

 

jeff

[Kamome]

Are the Tomytec Deocolle Combat series of any use? Essentially just Tomytec buildings with scorch marks and damage.  They are a little limited in range depending on what you were intending but it seems to get expanded from time to time. Thought the damaged elevated expressway would make a good diorama for Gundam or something similar.

 

https://www.tomytec.co.jp/diocolle/dcm/

[cteno4]

One of our clubmembers has used them for an Evangelon battle scene Ttrak module. They work well for that. But I want goji pushing thru some buildings so much more massive destruction. I realize I need to be looking more at earthquake damaged buildings as maybe more like a goji strike vs a bomb blast/shelling in how things would shatter. Also I need figure out a good way to make good rubble. Plus you need to do the building interiors with all the building guts coming out!
 

Realizing to do this well will the an order of magnitude more work per building that man king just a nice undamaged building!

 

jeff

[cteno4]

So a damaged outland building showed up today and started to think about detail damage to add to it and first thing is broken off rebar that you see when a cement construction floor is damaged. Took some small 1(8w resistors and heated the lead wire up and poked it into edge of the floor. Trick is to get the hot end of wire into place fast enough for it to be hot enough to drop in place. I think I can just place the wire and put the soldering iron on the wire near the end and heat it enough to quickly embed the end well. I need to bend the bars up a lot and that requires a good solid embed. But effect is pretty good, these need to be painted and some blobs of concrete added sticking to the rebar and even hanging bits of floor still holding on by the rebar! I have spools of 28g lead wire so plenty of rebar to work with! 
 

Now wondering what some small bits of styrene will do in my old scenery blender and coffee grinder to make debris rubble. I need to look for some ballast like material that is more angular than round for rubble as well. Micro rubble or maybe some glitter that is just colored not reflective to be bits of paperwork and other office materials raining down as well. Need to make a bunch of desks and chairs so scatter in the floors nearer the edge of opened areas as well as bits of cubicle walls and such. This is where 3d printing would be helpful!

 

Maybe I can just make do with detailing the damaged outland buildings, but would be nice to have a building pretty much cut in half and also leveled down to the first couple of floors.

 

jeff

[bc6]

I like the details of the bent rebar but don't forget the UFO, lol.

[Cat]

Those darn Kilaaks!

[cteno4]

So in poking around for debris material I hit on crushed walnut shells! Used in sandblasting and rock tumbling as an abrasive. Looks very much like broken up concrete bits. Guessing light airbrushing some slightly different shades of concrete gray will work. Issue is sourcing them as most sold in huge quantities! I may try just smashing up some shells and trying them in the coffee grinder, but I expect they clean out the inside stuff well before crushing them. 
 

jeff

[Cat]

Terrarium aisle in the pet store!
 
Also make great ground flocking for wargaming miniatures.
~ , ~

[cteno4]

Ahh I was wondering if there was another source of them! I was going to look at the grocery store and see if there were any whole walnuts to buy and crack up myself! 
 

Another observation last night looking at the damaged outland model and wondering what else seemed missing and it dawned on me it’s there are no internal support columns in these buildings you would normally have! Normally you would never see them though a window so just not there (and most all outland buildings negate most of the floors all together). But looking at pictures of real life damaged buildings they are one of the most prevalent things that catches your eye poking up and out all over. I think this is due to the fact they probably have the greatest density of rebar and thickest cement of any of the above ground structures. You will still see a lower column standing while floors above it have collapsed on it and just crushed around the still upright columns. So now it’s adding some of these to each floor that is now opened up and a new challenge of how to beat up the column of square stock. Plastic may be hard to bang up so may try some balsa and try to paint out any wood grain. 
 

On a bright, non destructive note, I wandered over to Outland models web site and they are having a little sale and the plain, unpainted buildings are quite cheap ($6-9 range then 15% off and only $6 shipping) so I picked up some to practice on and play with ideas. They have also kept adding new little 3d printed bits and may at a decent price. Cute little harbor scene, a mini version of the Tomytec (that may make it onto a mini onetrak module).

 

jeff

[Cat]

Yeah, even the Tomytec ones look more like WW2 level de/construction.  
 
Nippers are your friends in beating up plastic shapes.