[9.34 - 9.37]: HITTIN' THE ROCK

The sequence discussed here is one of the points in which things really look wrong. The bad guy loses control of his car and crashes into a rock. Problem is that crashes are not supposed to work that way. There is a number of obvious physical inconsistencies in the crash animation:

• The car is running really fast before the crash, but just bumps into the rocks and stops there.
• The rocks do not move at all during the crash, it looks like they are much more heavy (or stuck in the ground?) that one would expect.
• The car does not deform at all because of the impact. There is no sign of damage in any visible part of it.

Doing this sequence right is not easy at all. One possible solution would be to 'cover' the actual crash using some particle effect like dust, or smoke from the crashed engine. This would avoid us the burden of creating (or simulating) the deformation of the car model. Even this solution would not be sufficient though: the car is crashing so fast into the rocks that its momentum should lead it to overturn. An obvious solution to this discrepancy would be to think of a different version of this sequence, that leads to a lower speed impact (the bad guy might try to brake before the crash, for instance).

There are some other (minor) flaws in this part of the clip: the rock textures look quite fake (C), and the overall particle simulation (both for dust and smoke) could have been done better. Dust particles for instance move away really fast or disappear in mid-air just after the impact (A). This looks wrong, but may be partially justified by the presence of strong wind. This is inconsistent with the following particle effect though: smoke coming from the broken engine moves up in an almost perfect straight line (B).