Unreal Engine 3 (2.0) Destructible Environments

[Halifax]

Okay, well I have made a little progress in this section with figuring out how they do it. I knew my original thought process was probably pretty undoable, because it would force textured polygons to be hidden within rendered object, and that would probably result in some serious z-fighting.

Now the Unreal Engine 3 way for destructibilty seems much more complicated, but eh, this process would suffice for a lot of people on here I am sure.

So I talked to someone who has used the Source engine, and they gave me some pointers on how they set it up.

First they create a standard model which is totally solid, etc. Then they copy that mesh, and knife it up, and add polygons into the exposed part, and texture them. After doing this, they go into the standard model, and make the physics geometry in which they create the bounding geometry, and add joints which hold the mesh together, and have a max force in which affects when the joint is broken. As a final process, they add collision geometry to all the broken pieces on the broken mesh. Next, they set all which piece should be spawned when for its respective joint.

In a second easier process you could just follow the same three steps above. But then you just create a single bounding box for the unbroken mesh, and a max force for the whole mesh. Then whenever the max force upon that object is surpassed, in the game, all the broken pieces are spawned, etc.

That's basically a short overview he gave me of how they do it.

[BlindSide]

I just realised that texcoordinates for objects like plain rock etc can just be mapped to X,Y,Z vector position coords allowing any arbitary rock shape to appear half-decently textured.

[Halifax]

I just realised that texcoordinates for objects like plain rock etc can just be mapped to X,Y,Z vector position coords allowing any arbitary rock shape to appear half-decently textured.

Wait, so what does this apply to? The Unreal Engine 3 2.0 demo?

[BlindSide]

It applies to any situation where you need to slice up a mesh thats covered in a generic tiling texture eg. rock, stone or dirt and you have trouble keeping the uv mapping nice after you slice it.

[Halifax]

It applies to any situation where you need to slice up a mesh thats covered in a generic tiling texture eg. rock, stone or dirt and you have trouble keeping the uv mapping nice after you slice it.

Ah, okay, I understand now.