Fracture - Dynamic Destruction System

Sorry I've not posted anything, or updated in a while. I've just moved house and not had internet for a long time!!!

But I have still been working away. Got lots of new features in the pipeline!

 

Great tool, thank you

 

Looking forward to try this. My game project is called "Destroyer". So this tool is perfect. Great job!

Just one question: can I destroy buildings with some cubes inside that stand for floors and pillars?

Thanks

 

Yes, you certainly can, it doesn't have to be cubes anymore either! Any convex mesh will do.

 

Support for this is coming, I'm currently working on some GPU based optimizations that will solve the only major issue (as far as I'm concerned right now) which is frame rate and how it's linked to the number of shards. Let me assure you though, that after I've submitted my latest improvements, that will be the least of your concerns.

As for breaks being to clean, there's nothing stopping you solving that problem. For instance, you could use tessellation to improve the visual quality of the edges using a noise lookup, or do a similar thing with POM shading.

 

Can you release a limited free version?

 

how is the project for this going? Are we able to destroy fully textured and modeled buildings? It would be nice to see another video. If you want I can provide a building model.

 

Yes, the LITE version is becoming free as we speak!

 

Hey, if anyone can supply me with models of stuff they want to see smashed. Sure, please send! Manage your expectations though, I am not superman, there is a limit to whats possible.

 

Here is a building I made very quickly. I wasn't sure how to model it exactly so it works with the destruction system, but hopefully it does.

 

It's quick, and it's dirty, and it has highlighted some crucial problems with my newer tools (not yet released). Thanks for that! And without further Big Ass Building Demol

I was really rushed putting this together, but you get the jist of it. No optimization, just threw the script on a mesh (after altering it to remove some quads that have no volume, thus cannot shatter properly).

Each "section" gets fractured into less than 20 fragments. All your UV's are kept intact and new UV's are placed on the inners.

It should be noted that this new fracturing technique might be available soon, the reason it's taking so long is I'm writing it all in C++ (although the webplayer version is using the C# counterparts) the C++ version is considerably faster and is parallelized using tbb.

 

What happened to the windows and the inside of the building? The demo looks ok. There's still some flaws like chunks that should fall because there's barley anything holding them up. And it gets pretty laggy when the destruction starts happening. Keep at it though.

 

Good job my friend, i have the lite version but i cannot access the custom trigger, can you help me?

 

Hi great work
I have a question: Can you make a simple textured house in the lite version?

 

What do you mean?

 

Do you mean, can you destroy house model with the free version... No

 

Can this work with raytrace?
Can you provide a demo with raytrace?

 

What do you mean by raytrace sorry?

 

Hi!
It looks nice!, i've the lite version and make some tests. Questions: It only works with box shaped objects? Or this is a limitation of the Lite version.
Now, i only need to destroy simple buildings in my game, mostly rectangular houses. But in the future i want to go a little deeper and make it more complex. Can i fracture objects of any shape ? is it possible to specify the inner texture of the chunks?

Thanks and keep working like that!
Cheers!

 

Hi, thanks for trying.

Yes the LITE version only handles boxes. But the PRO version will handle any convex mesh.

Future versions include the ability to specify inner materials but unfortunately it's not ready yet

 

hello! with this does it offer parameters to change how something breaks. like glass or stone or wood?

 

I have done the whole process correct (i use lite) but i cannot access the trigger component on the cube to call the function.

 

Do you have a code example?

 

Well i just tried to test it. I created a new script and wrote in Start():

GameObject.Find("Cube").GetComponent<Trigger>().TriggerDestruction(par1, par2);

But it says it can't find the Trigger Component. Also please could you explane me the parameters again? I didn't understand them from the doc.

Thank you.

 

This looks amazing! Does it have any support for dynamic slicing?

 

If I remember rightly Triggers are in a namespace, so you will have to use the fully qualified name.

 

Not as of yet, I plan to release an update early next year though, it would be simple to include such a feature.

 

Hi,

I just bought the pro version, and I'm having issue with all your demo projects.
For example on your Shatter - Structural, On play, I get 999+ errors saying that there is no MeshCollider attached to the "Shad" game object.

The error come from the script Shard.cs, line 28 -> meshCollider.convex = true;
As there is no Meshfilter component and no mesh attached to the shard, it can't create the meshcollider and if I click on the object to break it I get the error No Meshfilter attached to the "Fractured shard" gameobject, but you try to acces it in the following scripts: Shard.cs line 18 and line 56 and BaseFracture.cs line 323 and line 176.

I get the same problem when I try to follow your quick tutorial in your documentation in an empty scene with your shardpool, a cube with the boxfracture.cs and a plane as the ground. I get 801 errors, 800 being the no MeshCollider attached to the "Shad" game object from shard.cs line 28 and one error saying No Meshfilter attached to the "Fractured shard" gameobject, but you try to acces it in the following scripts: Shard.cs line 18 and line 56 and BaseFracture.cs line 323 and line 176.

What am I doing wrong ?

Thanks a lot for your help

Boris

 

Hi Boris,

Sorry I just got a chance to look at this, I have been away for the Christmas period and I'm just back!

Hmmm... Sounds as though it may be a problem with the tool as a result of some Unity update as I haven't changed the code in a long time and it was obviously working once upon a time.

I've had a wee look, and have a fix for you.

In the "Shard.cs" script, on lines 26 27 the following lines of code should be there:

Code (csharp):

1.            
2. meshFilter = GetComponent<MeshFilter>() ?? gameObject.AddComponent<MeshFilter>();
3. meshCollider = GetComponent<MeshCollider>() ?? gameObject.AddComponent<MeshCollider>();
4.  

Change those to:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. meshFilter = GetComponent<MeshFilter>() == null ? gameObject.AddComponent<MeshFilter>() : GetComponent<MeshFilter>();
3. meshCollider = GetComponent<MeshCollider>() == null ? gameObject.AddComponent<MeshCollider>() : GetComponent<MeshCollider>();
4.  

My guess is that Unity has done some dodgy stuff that's resulted in GetComponent having a slightly different behavior under the ?? operator... Which should just be a null conditional... Any takers from Unity? I'll need to file a bug report about this.

 

Thanks a lot for your reply and your help. It works now!

 

Hi smb02dunnal ,

Fantastic work by the way. I had a few questions about the Lite version of Fracture, as I am unsure weather I need to get the full version for a feature that I want.

Is it only possible to fracture a mesh once, or can you chip away at a brick multiple times? It seems like once you fracture a an object it is deleted and replaced with a load of fracture shards.

In the structure demo it looks like a large mesh that can be fractured multiple times. Is this possible in the full version of Fracture or is the house made of lots of little meshes that are attached together somehow?



Cheers,
Peter

 

In that demo, the house is prefractured and the structural integrity calculations are made offline. Then at run time, the pre fractured shards can be fractured again dynamically.

This is a feature of the pro version sorry.

 

No worries, thanks for the quick reply.

So fractures can never be fractured further, but if I got the Pro version I could pre-fracture a large mesh and chip away at the corners to achieve the effect I want?

Also, are the fracture sizes based on the force of the impact? So small hits chip tiny bits off the mesh and large hits knock huge chunks off?

Cheers,
Peter

 

No worries, yes that's the jist of it.

Yeah, the size of the shards are proportional to the force of the impact.

 

Thanks smb02dunnal, I cant wait to start playing around in Fracture Pro.

 

Ok, so here's how I understand your system:

There are two fracturing systems: the dynamic fracture at runtime and the pre-calculated fracturing in the editor.

The dynamic fracture system will fracture a given mesh, once the requirements have been fulfilled, into a number of shards (determined by the force of impact), of which none can be fractured further.

The pre-calculated system allows you to select a mesh in the editor and designate it for fracturing (presumably with configurable requirements), upon which a new object composed of dynamically fracturable meshes is created.

Is this correct?


How does your system interact with prefabs? If were to create a structure out of several meshes, pre-fracture them, and create a prefab, how would the system react?

Would it be possible to set up your system such that on a raycast hit pre-fractured shards are detached from its connections and then fracture? I'm aiming to simulate the effect of a powerful laser.

 

Hi smb02dunnal,

How are you pre-fracturing your mesh? Are you using an external program to split the mesh before you import it into Unity?

Cheers,
Peter

 

Does the pro version have the ability to fracture shards? I guess what I really want is for the shards to be fractured infinitely but the smaller the shard, the stronger it is (and thus harder to fracture) to control the number of shards.

Also, how easy is this to hook into Unity's built-in networking? (probably not that hard but I want to ask before purchasing)

EDIT: I realize that posts above say that shards can't be fractured further but perhaps you can take this as a feature request?

 

i don't have the pro version yet but im wondering if i can make my gun break the objects into the shards. the bullets from my gun are ray cast, i don't know how to trigger the destruction, currently using lite.

 

forgot to mention my ray cast adds force to rigid bodies, it works on all rigid bodies but not the fracture able ones or shards. since all objects with the script are rigid bodies will i be able to make a skyscraper with multiple floors and objects inside without it falling over due to it being a rigid body. don't know if this is possible but couldn't you just make the shards that are broken off rigid bodies and not the structure its self, this may help with lag because as you mentioned above the rigid bodies create a lot of the lag.

last thing, is there a way to make the shards that have been broken off render to not be visible and there rigid bodies go idle when the player is a certain distance away, not sure if this would make the object they came from go invisible and rigid body idle as well.

 

Is this asset no longer supported?

 

Sorry guys, yes it's still supported. It seems I stopped getting notifications from Unity for this thread!

 

Not that hard I would say. It may require some tweaking if you wanted to make the generated shards deterministic across the network... Although not impossible! Let me know if you'd like this and can do some testing for me.

 

The prefracturing is actually done using the latest version of fracture... In which you can fracture any mesh (not just convex ones). Also I've added a neat offline fracture tool, which preserves UV's etc...

I've been working on making this run time efficient as well, but it will likely end up being a PC only feature to start off with.

 

Hi, your Fracture system looks really promising, but I was wondering is there a way to store a destruction event (a building collapsing for example) and then playing that as an animation to save on CPU/GPU power? I'm talking about something similar like the "levolution" events in Battlefield 4. Smaller structures/objects would still need to be calculated and displayed in real time though. Any thoughts on this?

Greetings
-Jan from CDS

 

Sounds like a pretty cool idea!

And sounds like it would be really handy... Let me see what I can do.

 

I was actually also wondering exactly how flexible is it in terms of materials? As from the demoes i've seen and used. The structures/objects fracture like glass, stone or the like. How would it handle for example the rupturing of metal from a shipping container?
Also, how well would this work on a moving object? As currently we're making a sci-fi mecha/infantry combat based fps. And the mech's have armor that breaks down and loses "hitpoints" Is there a way to keep track how much you've lost of a single armor plate? The addition of this system would add a lot to our game both visually and in terms of mechanics.
Lastly is there a way to limit the amount of pieces on screen at a time? Getting rid of the smallest parts, or changing them to a static object? Again like my previous post, this is mainly to keep cpu/gpu strain as low as possible, as I don't have the greates desktop in the world.

Greetings
-Jan from CDS

 

Its voronoi fracturing, so its really geared towards materials like stone and glass sorry.

You could track how many pieces a single piece of armour has broken into sure.

There are some tools which cone with fracture which allow you to control how long the broken pieces hang around for and whether to keep then while they are offscreen.

 

Alright, thank you. I'll certainly be picking up Fracture Pro when I get the funds to do so. Until then, I'll keep messing around in Fracture Free.

(p.s.: I was actually wondering, how does this affect navigation meshes? Is there a way to know, like hey I can't walk here anymore cause this building fell over?)

Greetings
-Jan from CDS

 

Will the LITE version ever see shard lifespan? This is a nice framework, however as a student doing a project for a class, the buildup of shards is really damaging to the performance of this game.