Is there a way to make an object split up into 2 objects while in game?

I'm very new to scripting but I was wondering if there's a way to get an object. while in game, to become split into 2 objects? My goal is to have a mechanic for an object to be able to split up into multiple pieces but to also be able to return back to its original state.

Ultimately, I'd like for the size of the objects to become smaller when splitting up and when they return, they revert to their original size. But I have no idea how to go about it.

 

Splitting like the object was exploding? Or splitting into copies of itself?

 

A simple way would be to build your gameobject around several child objects. When you want to split up the "pieces" you can unparent the child objects. When you want to recombine them, you can parent them again and will probably want to set their local positions so they are in the correct place relative to the parent.

For example you could have a "gun" object made up of the receiver, barrel, optics, stock, magazine, etc. You could unparent the optics, have your character move it somewhere else, possibly replace it with a new optics object, that you then parent to the gun object. Like when you want to switch the gun from a red dot to a long range scope.

As for messing with the size, the easiest way is to just change the scale of the object.

If what you mean is you want to break up a single mesh, there's been several threads discussing it on the forum.

 

splitting into copies of itself

 

Instantiate seems to be your friend then.

 

You can scale your objects down, and return them to a scale of 1,1,1 (or whatever their original) when needed.

You can consider object pooling if you have only a few types of objects and they do this regularly. (instead of destroying / instantiating).