Nvidia Blast

I don't see any other topic on this, just curious if anyone has messed with it?
https://developer.nvidia.com/blast-10

They do have a Unity intergration on github, which seems to work..open it in 5.5+

 

that looks pretty cool. Can you make a youtube video showing it off?

 

Sure, The unity sample is just cubes, so I also recorded the SDK sample

 

I like the way this looks compared to most dynamic destructible assets I've seen. But it all seems like sorcery to me... Does this work on non-nVidia GPUs? Does it require latest DX or anything?

 

Blast looks really impressive, how many ms does it take for that Unity demo? Anything less than 2-3 ms is a completely usable in a video games.

 

afaik, it doesn't use the GPU or DirectX, blast just handles the sim of parts breaking...it's upto the app to use w/e physics and rendering engine.

The nvidia page has alot of timing info. any bottle neck would be from physx or rendering. the cube demo is too basic to judge real world performance.

 

So Nvidia Blast is APEX Destruction 2.0, I was mistaking it as the PhysX GRB (GPU physic simulation) available in Physx 3.4.

 

looks very nice, where i can get the unity3d files from the nvidia blast ? i tried to search on google, but didn't found them.

 

Follow instructions here:
https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-source-github

 

thank you @bocs

 

I'm in the process of developing Unity wrapper and asset for the Blast, stay tuned!

 

I've also been messing with making a wrapper for it.

They have a external tool to fracture the meshes (.obj/.fbx)...
I converted the code to a plugin to work directly with unity meshes.

Still early stuff, but I can now create the fracture meshes inside unity.

example: cube cut into 25 chunks
*warning: programmer interface

 

Impressive.

 

It was already in Unity for the butterfly demo, not a clue why it didn't get fully integrated..

 

The usual answer is there's no one available to work on that particular aspect of the engine.

 

I thought they had like...1400 employees? If even half of those are engineers...and I hope it's mostly engineers....

Heck, if they are running short, they could shuffle some from other areas.
Like...the terrain update!

 

get through all the sign up .. find out the repository only supports win64x? is that right?.. disappointing.

 

remind me of RS6

 

Here is the first demo:



https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3Y2U9YaBm4hYnVaRTEyVzZTSU0

 

Can you talk a bit more about what exactly this does, what the limitations are and what pre-processing (if any) is necessary? Like, do the meshes need to be pre-fractured, does it handle unstable overhangs to a degree, and how well would it scale up to a massively big scene?

 

Martin_H, I think this contains pretty good explanation of the system: https://developer.nvidia.com/blast-10

Meshes can be cut in realtime, but fracturing takes about 50ms - 5000ms so it's semi-realtime.
So the fracturing should be done in-editor for maximum performance gain, but it can also be done during scene loading or async during gameplay.

Blast toolkit seems to handle massive scenes quite nicely, but if there are lots of rigidbody chunks moving around, the physx physics itself can get quite costly.

First version contains support for in-editor and semi-realtime fracturing, slicing and cutting.
After the fracturing is done in the Fracture editor, the fractured model can be examined and the generated chunks and bonds can be examined or modified.

Damage shaders, hierarchial fracturing, stress solver and joints is something that I will be adding in the future.

 

Thanks for the info, that sounds promising! I'll be keeping an eye on this thread. I'm not sure I have the performance budget to really go wild with this, but I could imagine putting it on a few hero assets that would benefit the most from it.

 

That's incorrect, it's available on Win/Lin/PS4/One and even ships scripts to generate solutions for both 32 and 64 bit architectures. Did you check the source folder?

Are you pinvoking it? If so, are you marshalling collections or something? 5000ms is way too much, I'm procedurally fracturing massive structures and it never goes >750µs even on a quite modest testing rig. Besides that make sure you're not on debug builds and such.

How are you planning to implement the stress solver (ExtStressSolver) and the other PhysX extensions? Unless you're talking about doing that in the native side (you'd need the source license) you'd have to sync the data independently piping everything through your managed code and basically recreating ExtSync, which is certainly going to be a major pain in the rear and is definitely not going to perform decently.

 

suggestions:
https://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/nvidia-blast-in-unity
https://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/support-for-nvidia-gameworks-libraries

 

Hi there. May I ask? What's the name of the external tool to fracture the meshes? Thanks.

 

not sure the name, but it was a command line tool included.
sorry, been almost a year since I messed with it, so don't remember exactly.

 

oh okay, thank you =) And yeah, sorry for the necro posting.

 

It's me again. Sorry for being annoying, but do you still have the plugin from your screenshot? Or at least what did you use as reference fracture system in order to fracture the mesh? Thanks.

 

I can post the project with a compiled .dll...
*but it is very limited, and just a quick test I made

BUT...

I don't think I can post the source of the .dll since it's 99% nvidia's code and the EULA only allows compiled versions.
this is the interface code I made, so you can see how limited it currently is (lot's of hard coded stuff):
https://pastebin.com/nE90fagU

*if you don't code C++, even more useless

 

Thank you so much. I will try to understand it. I appreciate your help.

 

ok...this is all the support i'll give on this:
*windows 64bit only

1. create new project
2. import FractureTest.unitypackage
3. add primitive to scene (sphere, box etc..)
4. click menu Fracture->Test
5. drag primitive object to editor window
6. click fracture

download here:
http://bocs.site/files/FractureTest.unitypackage

 

you are amazing! Works like a charm.

 

Hi there. Sorry for constant quoting your posts. You're the only one person who knows about blast. May I ask a question? I've generated a fragmented mesh by using cmd AuthoringTool, and got 2 files. .blast and the actual fragmented mesh .fbx, May I ask, how do I use it in unity? Is there any pattern or particular way, because I didn't get how it works in the demo. Btw, It works fine in NVIDIA SampleAssetViewer.

 

really no clue, I never got that far you are at the point I moved on.

 

@wobes

So you got me interested in this again since tuskake never released anything.

This is what i've found so far today:

1. If you want to compile with VS 2017, you can do some small mods
*edit \BuildTools\cmake_projects_vc14win64.bat -> change line 30 to have "Visual Studio 15"
*this will make the .sln (but all folders still say "vc14"..too much work to change all those)

*3 projects will not build (AuthoringTool, PerTests, UnitTests)
*you have to change some properties in each of them to in "C/C++ All Options" Treat Warnings as Erros to NO or /WX-
everything will compile now


2. Unity Example

*it uses 2 .dll's they don't include the source code
*NvBlastExtCommon, and NvBlastExtUtils

using the updated Blast .dlls
the wrapper is using old names...like
NvBlastAssetCreateRequiredScratch -> new NvBlastGetRequiredScratchForCreateAsset
NvBlastAssetCreate -> NvBlastCreateAsset

So with the missing code, and outdated wrapper...
it's going to take alot of work to update

3. TL;DR;

The "Unity" example only uses the core API, no wrapper for the higher level "Toolkit"
So outdated the imported functions don't match never versions
only supplied "debug" versions in the example which will be alot slower
I think to load .blast files you will need to wrap NvBlastExtSerialization (which they don't do in the example)

I'm going to play with it some more, but using it AS-IS...just stop

 

Thank you so much for your research, it is really helpful. Sad that there is zero support for unity from Nvidia.

 

I've been working on wrapping the NvBlastExtAuthoring classes.

I wrapped the NvMesh,NvMeshCleaner,NvFractureTool,NvVoronoiSitesGenerator

This let make a simple Unity Editor:

Example: 3 variations of slicing, and 1 of Voronoi


let me clean up some things, and I'll release full source for this.

 

Wow, well done!

 

Here is what I have so far

Download Unity package and c++ source code:
http://bocs.site/files/nvBlast_v0.1.zip

*Some help compiling the c++
https://docs.google.com/document/d/174HfCHWoRMcrLgKsVY5ozIIVLgzm-koww8V3UuZ6OFM/edit?usp=sharing



*full disclosure, I only needed to get the fracturing tools working for a project i'm working on.
*So if I continue, i'd have to make it a paid asset in the end.

 

Well done! Thank you for your contribution. Quick question.

Does Nvidia license allows to sell their sources as an asset? And by the way, did you apply any shader for the pieces?

 

My understanding, source code = no...compiled binary = yes. (obviously could be wrong)

standard shader, just dragged a texture on the objects.

 

Updated it some...I'd make a WIP thread, but don't know how many more updates i'll make to this.

Added: Clustered Fracture
Added: Inside Materials
Changed: GUI recoded to look cleaner

Download Unity Package + C++ Source code:
http://bocs.site/files/nvBlast_v0.2.zip

 

Edit: Updated download link v0.3a - v0.3 had a serious bug

ok, so 1 more update
I want this to be useful and show how this can be used even without a "complete blast wrapper"

started with a few lines of code, then I couldn't help myself....
Added: Editor tool gets object from selected (filtered)
Added: Rigidbody, Colliders to chunks
Added: Skinned Meshes supported
Added: Fracture Skinned Mesh - creates slice points from bones (mesh needs to be 0,0,0...too much funky math)
Added: Create Prefabs - saves generated meshes to assests.
Added: Simple Destructible script
Added: stuff I can't remember...so tired

Download Unity Package + C++ Source:
http://bocs.site/files/nvBlast_v0.3a.zip

Here is a video, I know it's boring...but try to watch it all.​

 

Someone feel like throwing it up on github (preferably an active account) ? looks like the birth of an excellent community driven fracture package. Thanks @bocs

 

You are insane (In a good way ), amazing work. Thanks for the sharing.

 

Yeh thanks for doing that wrapper @bocs .. checked out the v0.2 and think I'll have a use for it. v0.03a little slower.. all the collider meshes being added?

One thing Unity are going to need to do something about notifing end users about packages that are using materials setup for the old shader pipeline, just saw purple shaders on import until I realized they weren't using the Lightweight pipeline ones.

 

@Player7 yeah, that would slow it down...fixed

Added: Toggle for Preview Colliders
Fixed: Some slicing options were broke

Download Unity Package + C++ Source:
http://bocs.site/files/nvBlast_v0.3a.zip

 

Just some quick bug fixes...

Change: Uses Baked skin mesh
Change: does not put preview script on prefab

Download Unity Package + C++ Source:
http://bocs.site/files/nvBlast_v0.3b.zip

 

Congratulations on a job well done bocs, and thank you for your amazing effort to get this done and thank you even more for sharing it!

I've made some changes to the toolset you provided along with the wrapper, let me go over those changes real quick.

Ability to merge inside and outside submeshes to a single mesh to save on draw calls at the expense of using the same material on both, by toggling that "Use Same Material" checkbox:


Slightly edited the code to recalculate meshes to fix their pivots.


Ability to calculate a footprint for buildings to preserve level layout and AI Pathfinding Mesh using the same tools:


This is how to tool looks like when you put a fractured gameobject in a scene into "Source":


When you click "Select Objects" the code automaticly selects every chunk whose position.y is less than the threshold value we define on the tool:


Once you have more than 1 object selected, the tool changes to this:


This is after I manually deselected some chunks because they were good chunks:


And this is the final result when you combine them:


Those chunks have been auto hidden, their meshes combined into a new gameobject with a mesh collider attached, rigidbody not attached because we don't want to footprint to move, and the new mesh saved into the project, and our prefab in the assets folder updated. Everything Dandy and good.

The motivation behind this footprint feature was to preserve level layout and AI Mesh for whatever that might be lurking in your levels. It also gives you more to play with in terms of rigidbodies and drawcalls, so you can make the chunks above the footprint smaller etc.

I'll share the changes once I make sure there are no hiccups.

 

@OGUZCANSOYSELCUK, @bocs great job.

The ability to merge submeshes to a single mesh and the footprint changes look great. Could you share the code?

Thanks