New Unreal Development Kit PhysX Based Building Test is Completely Destructible, Looks Awesome

• March 31, 2010
• Written by Mark
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YouTube user DigitalDemolition is at it again with the Unreal Development Kit, and PhysX destructibles. This time he has made another impressive building structure and envinronment that is made with PhysX destructibles and can be completely destroyed. We recently posted about his work making the Physx Building test & PhysX Street Block Test with the Unreal Development Kit and PhysX destructibles. This new building is looking a lot better and the physics/destruction looks more realistic. Check it out below and be sure to keep checking his YouTube Channel for more of his work.

Be sure to check out the previous posts we have covered on the UDK FractureMeshes and PhysX Destructibles:

UDK PhysX Destructibles: Physx Building test & PhysX Street Block Test
Unreal Development Kit PhysX Based Fracture Test Shows Completely Destructible Environment
New Unreal Development Kit Videos Show PhysX Based Destruction
Tutorial: Build Your Own PhysX Destructible’s With The Unreal Development Kit
New UDK PhysX Wall Test Shows Entire Sections Falling Over

Physx Building test(latest):

UDK PhysX Destructibles: Physx Building test & PhysX Street Block Test

• February 23, 2010
• Written by Mark
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YouTube user DigitalDemolition has been doing a lot with the Unreal Development kit and PhysX destuctibles lately, he recently made an impressive video showing off PhysX Rigid Body Destruction made with the Unreal Develop Kit. He has now made an entire building and what is the start of a city block using the UDK and PhysX destructibles. Check out the videos below and be sure to follow his YouTube channel here as he plans to do more with the UDK and PhysX destructibles.

Be sure to check out the previous posts we have covered on the UDK FractureMeshes and PhysX Destructibles:

Unreal Development Kit PhysX Based Fracture Test Shows Completely Destructible Environment
New Unreal Development Kit Videos Show PhysX Based Destruction
Tutorial: Build Your Own PhysX Destructible’s With The Unreal Development Kit
New UDK PhysX Wall Test Shows Entire Sections Falling Over

PhysX Street Block Test:
the beginning of a small sized city block with each item that you see utilizing physics in one way or another. This was created by combining the effect’s of rigid body’s,physx walls,Joints, and Kactors. It is extremely slow in area’s due to a crappy video card…… intel x4500HD and due to me not optimizing most of the sections yet.

PhysX Destructible: UDK Rigid Body Collision Destruction Tutorial And Destruction Video

• February 20, 2010
• Written by Mark
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YouTube user DigitalDemolition has made and uploaded an impressive video showing off PhysX Rigid Body Destruction made with the Unreal Develop Kit. We have been seeing many video’s like this made with the Unreal Development Kit fracture meshes and PhysX destructibles however this time it uses a vehicle that when hits the wall with a certain amount of force causes the PhysX based destruction. YouTube user Wallomedia10 has also made a really nice in-depth tutorial video showing how you can do this yourself with the Unreal Development kit. We embedded both videos below along with the PhysX Destructible Reference from the Unreal Developer Network in case you are not familiar with what exactly PhysX destructibles in the UDK are.

Be sure to check out the previous posts we have covered on the UDK FractureMeshes and PhysX Destructibles:

Unreal Development Kit PhysX Based Fracture Test Shows Completely Destructible Environment
New Unreal Development Kit Videos Show PhysX Based Destruction
Tutorial: Build Your Own PhysX Destructible’s With The Unreal Development Kit
New UDK PhysX Wall Test Shows Entire Sections Falling Over

From the Unreal Developer Network PhysX Destructible Reference:

When to use a PhysXDestructible instead of a FracturedStaticMesh

The FracturedStaticMeshActor is an efficient way to generate small levels of destruction within a UE3 level. However, if you wish to scale up the amount destruction, the FracturedStaticMeshActor will soon reach some limitations. For one thing, every piece (or conglomorate) that gets ejected is represented by an AActor. If hundreds of pieces are ejected, the AActor overhead can be quite large.

The PhysXDestructibleActor is designed to operate within the regime of hundreds, or even thousands, of rigid body pieces. It handles this in two ways. First, it represents its pieces as bones in SkeletalMeshes. This greatly reduces the AActor overhead. Secondly, it fractures hierarchically. So large pieces that are unfractured remain represented as one rigid body, and one SkeletalMesh bone.

In addition, PhysXDestructibles have some extra features that enhance the effect of destruction. You may assign a “crumble particle system,” which is intended to be a PhysXParticleSystem (see PhysXParticleSystemReference). This will represent the finest level of fracturing. That is, when the smallest pieces are destroyed, their volume will be replaced by a set of PhysX fluid particles. If you use a mesh data type, this can give a convincing crumbling effect. You may also assign a crumble sound, as well as a more traditional particle effect (for smoke or dust, e.g.).

PhysXDestructibleActors can be static or dynamic. If they are static, there are two ways to assign some parts of the Actor to be “support.” When a contiguous path (via chunk pieces) is lost between a chunk and a support chunk, then the chunk will come loose. This feature is available through the FracturedStaticMeshActor, but the PhysXDestructibleActor has an additional feature that allows them to create a support structure between touching actors. That is, islands of touching PhysXDestructibleActors will form one support structure. You may use this, for example, to create a tall column out of several PhysXDestructibleActors. If you shoot through the middle of the column, the actors on top will automatically come loose.

Finally, the PhysXDestructibleActor supports impact damage. By supplying an impact-to-damage scale, fracturing will occur when the PhysXDestructibleActor is hit (or hits) hard enough.

Phys-x Rigid Body Destruction:

Physx Destructible – How to enable Rigid Body Collision Destruction:

Destructible Building Made With Unreal Development Kit Fracture Meshes

• January 10, 2010
• Written by Mark
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v8matey has taken the Fracture Meshes in the Unreal Development Kit one step further than what we have previously seen, instead of just creating a simple block or wall that can be destroyed he has made an impressive demo with an actual building made using fracture meshes, the entire building is completely destructible and as you can see from watching the videos giant chunks of the building fall off when they no longer have any support. Pretty impressive stuff, as more and more people start to play around with the Unreal Development Kit along with the Fracture Meshes and PhysX destructibles we hope to see more impressive destructible environments like this and hopefully at some point be implemented into mods and games.

Check out the previous video’s we have covered on UDK Fracture meshes and watch this new fully destructible building below.

NOTE: Not all of the video’s use PhysX destructibles, some are just plain Fracture Meshes before being converted to PhysX destructible’s.

Unreal Development Kit PhysX Based Fracture Test Shows Completely Destructible Environment
New Unreal Development Kit Videos Show PhysX Based Destruction
Tutorial: Build Your Own PhysX Destructible’s With The Unreal Development Kit
New UDK PhysX Wall Test Shows Entire Sections Falling Over

Fracture building static mesh.
Ok Im testing this on a slow computer, after tweaking with the fracture props an etc, i found a way to increase the FPS was by changing the static mesh properties from a 32 lightmap to a 16, an helped smooth out the FPS a fare bit… Also working with default collision that comes with UDK Fracture objects are solid until there is a big enough hole to go through, going by mostly per poly collision.
This was made in 3dmax v9 an imported into UDK no collision meshes included..
I would still like to improve this scene with some type of physics so the bottom floor gives way then the whole building will crumble. so far i simply just added a non fracture base mesh for the structure of the building to avoid a floating building if u were to take out the whole bottom floor.