Hi,

As you may had already seen in games like Unreal Tournament 3, specially in the Extreme PhysX mod pack, and in others like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter there is a heavy use of destructible environments, bascially the fact of breaking walls and objects.

I wonder if using the World Editor or directly in the code I can achieve the destruction of any rigid body, or if it is not possible with rigid bodies, with any type of object, without using a modeling/animation tool to create the effect.

Thanks for your help, if possible tips would be very appreciated.

Hi,

I haven't played the games that you've mentioned (I've played UT3 but the normal version) so I don't know exactly how do those effects look.

But normally I can say that you can make destructable environments in the code.

For example have 3 objects, combine their actors with joints, set the joints to be breakable.

With the joints the 3 objects will look as one solid object, but as soon as you apply forces on them which will exceed the joint limit, the joint will break, and the objects will be separated.

Esenthel Wrote:Hi,

I haven't played the games that you've mentioned (I've played UT3 but the normal version) so I don't know exactly how do those effects look.

But normally I can say that you can make destructable environments in the code.

For example have 3 objects, combine their actors with joints, set the joints to be breakable.

With the joints the 3 objects will look as one solid object, but as soon as you apply forces on them which will exceed the joint limit, the joint will break, and the objects will be separated.

Hi thanks for your answer, but for example can't I have 1 actor and let PhysX determine the way it should brake? More or less what Havok Destruction does. BTW very nice engine

Thanks

From what I know, 1 actor cannot be broken. It has to be done using multiple actors.

Well, so I guess that my wall won't break that realistically, but I may drive some looks away with a nice bump map . Nevertheless thanks for your help .

you can create a wall using multiple box actors (like bricks)

Or for more complex algorithms - you may want to render the wall as one Mesh, but split it into multiple Meshes (Actors) as soon as it got broken, it's just an idea.

I think using bricks as actors will be the choice. Nevertheless I was playing around and using the World loading tutorial and a .wrld file I found, I tried to make a test level. I got a free sckyscrapper which I configured using the mesh editor, obtaining the .gfx, .mtrl, and .mesh files, and of course I updated the .obj. I moved the files to the tutorial Data folder and I executed the program. I only got the terrain rendered but the skyscrapper was lost :shock:. Do you know how could this be or could you offer me a little tutorial on mesh creating and adding it the "game"? BTW the skyscrapper is really huge, but hasn't such a high poly count, does that matters? Thanks for your help, I leave you a picture with the problem:



At the top left is the windowed simple world loader tutorial, some #2, and in the background is the world editor with the building.

maybe you haven't set an object container responsible for the type of the skyscrapper

check tutorials code 'World.setType..'

PhysX have a Metal Bending thing, could be interesting

Yes, I think it is based on, soft bodies.
I'll be looking into it in the future.
Thanks for the info.