Hey all, I’ve been trying to set up partial destruction in unreal engine 4.3, (instead of the entire mesh breaking instantly) but I’ve had no luck so far and was hoping to find some answers here as I cannot find any tutorials on it.
I have noticed that in the first video the entire mesh is simulating physics, as I cannot get this working I’m not sure how the support chunk params are supposed to work. I’m going to take a shot in the dark and assume that the support params remove the movement of the effected chunks like in the second video? If so how did the first video manage it with support params? Of course I could be completely wrong here, but hey that’s why I’m here!
There are a couple of ways to go about setting up destructibles like you’re seeing in the videos. Those are meshes that are setup using PhysXLab or 3dsMax/Maya plugin.
Unreal Engine 4 only has one depth level meaning that it is either fully destroyed or not at all. There are no support chunks in the engine at the moment. (In UDK this was working and easily setup within the editor and may be setup the same in UE4 in the future)
This series of tutorials is a great place to start. It’ll work out of PhysXLabs standalone application and give you a good foothold for getting started. They are easy enough to follow that it should be fairly straightforward.
The best ones to start with are:
Slice and Cut Fracturing: Both of these go hand in hand but they do show you how to have a support depth so that you have a base wall that cannot be destroyed and have chunks break off.
Multiple FBX: This good for seeing how support depths work. You won’t necessarily need multiple fbxs like this but it’ll give you a good understanding of support depth and how to quickly set it up.
Jersey Barrier: This is a cool one. The vids you posted use this method. Which is to have large chunks that when destructed are erased and replaced with a GPU particle effect that is spawned to make it seem more debris heavy than if you made it custom.
Another couple of things for settings in UE4:
Open your projectile blueprint and change the collision to custom. Change the overlap part from block all to destructible.
Find your destructible mesh in your scene and under the collision change that to custom and change the overlap to projectile.
This should get you started automatically with the destructible breaking on impact with the destructible.
If you have any questions please let me know. I’ll be more than happy to help you get some cool destruction things going.
Here is what you need to change:
First image is the DM in the scene. Other two are for the MyProjectile BP. The first is the Collision sphere for the projectile and the second is the sphere mesh.
With the blueprint projectile we have a collision mesh that is setup there. By having it set to collision events we can detect and set things to happen when certain things overlap with it. It may not seem intuitive, but it gives you, the creator, a great amount of control to setup your scenes to work in conjunction with assets the way you deem fit.
The main reason it’s setup this way with the projectile, is to tell the destructible that it can only take collisions when it overlaps with the projectiles collision mesh and vise versa. This is a good way to keep the destructible from falling apart or being destroyed by different methods.
If there is a particular scenario that you’re trying to accomplish feel free to post a new AnswerHub question and we can look at it there to provide some assistance if you’re having trouble setting it up.
“This is a good way to keep the destructible from falling apart or being destroyed by different methods”
Of course, makes a lot of sense…Thanks !
Yes I have a particular scenario in mind but I need to tinker more alone to make sure I can’t make it work by myself before requesting some help.
If I’m stuck, I will no doubt scream for help
By the way I take the opportunity, being no coder I wanna say how much I’m impressed by the blueprint system…
That’s understandable. If you have issue you’re trying to get an answer to or pointers feel free to post here or on the Forums. There is a very active community there that is willing to help out as well!
