Destructible Environments - Josh?

[Shard]

On the old forums I brought up the question of destructible environments (buildings mainly) and Josh linked a Youtube video from Newton showing a temple being destroyed by a rock and said that it was coming.

 

I'm the just wondering what the status of the destructible environments is.

[Richard Simpson]

Yeah, I would like to know about this too

[DaveLee]

You guys are really asking for the pain! The art pipeline for destructible assets can get pretty complicated from what I've heard, but it would neat to have the option. Bad Company 2 is a great example of how destructible environments can completely change game mechanics.

[Shard]

You guys are really asking for the pain! The art pipeline for destructible assets can get pretty complicated from what I've heard, but it would neat to have the option. Bad Company 2 is a great example of how destructible environments can completely change game mechanics.

 

Oh definitely. An RTS game changes a significant amount. And FPS just become awesome, like CoD:MW2 where you can start shooting through a wall until it breaks and kills an enemy behind it.

 

Or just rocket the building the enemy is in

 

Plus it allows for the map to become far more dynamic and evolving as things change and the players need to adapt to it.

[Marleys Ghost]

The art pipeline for destructible assets can get pretty complicated from what I've heard

 

Lovely and simple with UDK's fracture tool.

[Masterxilo]

like CoD:MW2 where you can start shooting through a wall until it breaks and kills an enemy behind it

You can't destroy anything in CoD (except for scripted things in the campaign maybe). I guess you meant Battlefield BC2.

[Shard]

You can't destroy anything in CoD (except for scripted things in the campaign maybe). I guess you meant Battlefield BC2.

 

Whoops, indeed, BF: BC2

[Rekindled Phoenix]

I use Blender. There's to be a plug-in to create fractured sub-objects from your original model.

Blender Fracture plug-in

And another used in this video...

FractrueMe Plug-in

 

I haven't used it yet. Maybe you can create something like this video? Swap the model with the sub-objects on collision?

 

http://vimeo.com/10526000

[Pixel Perfect]

Various people including myself have tried this with some success. I developed a series of classes for defining destructible objects of which my exploding barrels are an example as they break apart when exploded (video link). I went on to add crates etc. I know wh1sp3r demoed some destructible buildings too which looked really effective. The trickiest part I found was generating the physics objects for all of these but the technique works really well.

 

The Newton demo gave me the impression that the destruction was being done procedurally in code rather than using the prefab fractured object method, but I may be wrong.

[Marleys Ghost]

I was under the same impression as Pixel and it was being done in code and not prefabs.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyWgER5O1YI

[Rekindled Phoenix]

How would you accomplish this without using prefabs? What would be step-by-step process in pseudo code?

 

Do you guys think we should incorporate it into the engine, or should we wait until Newton releases the updates?

[paramecij]

Various people including myself have tried this with some success. I developed a series of classes for defining destructible objects of which my exploding barrels are an example as they break apart when exploded (video link). I went on to add crates etc. I know wh1sp3r demoed some destructible buildings too which looked really effective. The trickiest part I found was generating the physics objects for all of these but the technique works really well.

Very nice! Do you swap out the model with broken parts when collision force reaches a threshold and then apply forces to them? I'm thinking of doing it this way, but don't like the idea of making all those individual pieces because i'm pretty weak when it comes to modeling

 

How would you accomplish this without using prefabs? What would be step-by-step process in pseudo code?

If i'm thinking in terms of a simple cube that is supposed to be solid stone block i can put a plane through it and work out where to add vertices to split the cube in two, maybe offset them a little to make a rougher cut and get some funky texturing.. in an actual mesh it would be many times more complex not to mention texturing, and would probably be very costly to create two or how many more physics bodies(likely convex hulls) and update the vertex buffers on every fracture. This would probably be more suited to pre-calculate some pieces based on different fracture points and then when the object breaks swap it out with the closest matching to save you from doing it by hand, hmm..

 

Maybe if you distribute some 'spare vertices' inside the mesh you could use those as fracture points and form new faces with them on the mesh?

I think i read somewhere that we'll be able to create vertices in the shader so maybe this will open up some possibilities?

[Pixel Perfect]

Very nice! Do you swap out the model with broken parts when collision force reaches a threshold and then apply forces to them? I'm thinking of doing it this way, but don't like the idea of making all those individual pieces because i'm pretty weak when it comes to modeling

Yes, each destructible object can have a whole load of properties set against it including the breaking force, so anything exerting this force from a nearby explosion to a collision with another object or even a fall from a height will initiate the break where the prefab parts are swapped for the original and forces applied to separate them.

The barrels for instance have a propagate explosion distance property assigned to them, and barrels within this distance from an exploding one will explode themselves. Yeah, I had to break the models apart myself in my only legal modelling tool as I can't afford the more sophisticated modelling tools (and I don't rip software). As I'm not a modeller either I found that a steep learning curve! The Blender tool looks nice though!