Need help with explosions

I've finally started coding my first D3D game, a breakout clone. It's been going pretty smooth until now. I was thinking of having the ball explode when it goes past the bat, but I am having trouble making this work. I have a mesh called 'Ball' that I load from an .X file. I was thinking about creating a dynamic vertex buffer and filling it with the vertex data from the Ball mesh, that way I could have the vertices explode out and change colors. Not sure if I am on the right track, or even if it can work this way but here is what I have so far.

I have these objects for the Ball and the dynamic buffer

Code:

CMesh               m_BallMesh;
CVertexBuffer       m_ExplosionBuffer;

My vertex buffer and custom vertex structure

Code:

bool CVertexBuffer::CreateBuffer(LPDIRECT3DDEVICE9 pDevice, 
                                 UINT numVertices, 
                                 DWORD FVF, 
                                 UINT VertexSize, 
                                 bool dynamic) { 
    Release(); 
    m_numVertices = numVertices; 
    m_FVF         = FVF; 
    m_VertexSize  = VertexSize; 

    D3DPOOL pool = dynamic ? D3DPOOL_DEFAULT : D3DPOOL_MANAGED; 
    DWORD usage  = dynamic ? D3DUSAGE_WRITEONLY | D3DUSAGE_DYNAMIC : D3DUSAGE_WRITEONLY; 
    if (FAILED(pDevice->CreateVertexBuffer(m_numVertices * m_VertexSize,
                                           usage, 
                                           m_FVF, 
                                           pool, 
                                           &m_pVB, 
                                           NULL ) ) ) { 
        SHOWERROR("CreateVertexBuffer failed.", __FILE__, __LINE__); 
        return false; 
    } 
    return true; 
}
 
    typedef struct PositionNormalTextured { 
    public: 
        PositionNormalTextured() 
            : X(0), Y(0), Z(0), Nx(0), Ny(0), Nz(0), Tu(0), Tv(0) { } 
        PositionNormalTextured(float x, float y, float z, 
                               float nx, float ny, float nz, 
                               float tu, float tv) 
            : X(x), Y(y), Z(z), Nx(nx), Ny(ny), Nz(nz), Tu(tu), Tv(tv) { } 
        float X, Y, Z; 
        float Nx, Ny, Nz; 
        float Tu, Tv; 
    } PositionNormalTextured;

And then I copy the vertex data from the mesh to the vertex buffer

Code:

    // Create the buffer
    m_ExplosionBuffer.CreateBuffer(pDevice,
                                   m_BallMesh.GetMesh()->GetNumVertices(),
                                   D3DFVF_XYZ | D3DFVF_NORMAL | D3DFVF_TEX0,
                                   sizeof(cstmVertex::PositionNormalTextured),
                                   true);
    // Lock the mesh vertex buffer and get pointer to its memory
    void** pVB;
    m_BallMesh.GetMesh()->LockVertexBuffer(0, pVB);
    // Copy the buffer data to the ExplosionBuffer
    m_ExplosionBuffer.SetData(m_BallMesh.GetMesh()->GetNumVertices(),
                              pVB,
                              0);
    m_BallMesh.GetMesh()->UnlockVertexBuffer();

But I get a segmentation fault when I get to the SetData function, which copies the data from pVB to m_ExplosionBuffer. I assumed that the size of m_ExplosionBuffer does not match the size of pVB, but everything looks ok to me.

What am I missing here? Or am I even on the right track?

OK< Never mind... I figured it out. I changed

Code:

    // Lock the mesh vertex buffer and get pointer to its memory
    void** pVB;
    m_BallMesh.GetMesh()->LockVertexBuffer(0, pVB);

to

Code:

    // Lock the mesh vertex buffer and get pointer to its memory
    char* pVB;
    m_BallMesh.GetMesh()->LockVertexBuffer(0, (void**)&pVB);

If you are using indexes in your meshes it would be easier to unlock both the index and vertex buffer. You know that 3 indices will always form a triangle and so you can decimate your mesh with this information. It does require two lock operations and two unlocks, but it makes things a lot easier.