For this new project, I wanted to learn more about the cloth simulation tools and fluid simulation in Cinema 4D. I also reused the Thrausi plug-in which is a lot of fun and pretty flexible.

 

Some explanations and close-ups below.

The top left broken shape is simply created by extruding the egg-shape to give it some thickness and then using the Thrausi plug-in to break it into pieces. The plug-in has a nice way of using two colors for the inside and the outside fo the shapes it breaks, so it is pretty simple to create the colored edges.

 

By default, the plugin gives dynamics to each of the pieces, which means that if you play the animation in Cinema 4D, all the pieces will fall to the floor. To create the desired effect where some of the shell remains in place, the only thing to do was to disable the dynamics on the pieces that needed to stay in place.

The second broken egg is created with the same technique, except that the egg was not extruded before being broken down and was therefore full.

This third item is a combination of the previous technique (to create the broken shell) and fluid simulation for the content of the egg that seems to flow through the broken shell.

 

I followed a tutorial which was very helpful to understand the how to use the metaball tool in Cinema 4D. Essentially, the metaball tool creates a fluid skin around particles or objects. By animating the elements with dynamics, you can create the illusion of a fluid.

The last shape is created by using cloth simulation. I had found this tutorial a while back and had promised myself to use the effect. 

 

This is created making the egg shape have the dynamic properties of a cloth (e.g., making ripples, being sensitive to wind and gravity) and having an attractor deform the cloth and allowing it to tear it. The tutorial has all the nitty-gritty details on how to do that.