UNREAL ENGINE 5 - Advanced Use of the Fracture Editor (Chaos destruction, Geometry Collections)

A quick video covering some more advanced uses of the fracture tools I've found while producing my chaos prop destruction system

[@farzanb]

Amazing, Thank you for your incredible explanation and detailed breakdown. Can't wait to see more from you, specially the physics fields!

[@Rodutchi]

Would love to see a continuation and more experimentation with all this, and some performance tricks. This is the best tuto in the web on the chaos system easily. Rly appreciate it!

[@officialauspecs1285]

Easily the best video I've seen on chaos destruction. Kudos

[@PixelBokeh]

Great video. Hugely informative. Thank you for taking the time to create this with such clear explenations and examples.

[@ThreeTreeDog]

One feature I would like to see implemented would be saving the state of the clutter to a static mesh or layer, for instance rolling/smashing large boulders on hills and having the smaller rocks populate the surroundings accurately, then save that in a less costly format, it makes a more natural look for debris than just placing them.

[@tubicidio]

Hi, did you find a solution? I have the same goal as you.

[@playtablegg]

Agreed, this would be an excellent feature

[@alephnole7009]

Great video. Very descriptive and easy to understand. Very cool fracture techniques.

[@alephnole7009]

I wish there was a video like this on how the fracture system in MGRR works.

[@youvedos797]

Oh Nice Work! It is easy to understand and meaningful!

[@RossieKgan]

Great video. This is exactly what i needed, thanks.

[@klovver]

Great system!

[@skydoomo9298]

Good Video and SICK BIG taskbar!😂

[@alan83251]

This is great! How do you disable physics on the debris after a time? It would also be nice to be able to automatically generate a simple collision mesh on piles of debris, so that they kind of turn into "debris pile" objects that believably affect character movement without a significant performance loss. That's probably a custom function. Looking forward to seeing more from you!

[@evelynschwab7436]

Thanks! Unfortunately there’s no good way of changing collision responses with character moment in the current ue5 public release, so I used proxy meshes to collide with the player that just get destroyed after the object breaks. The way I disabled physics was using a disable field. After an object has not been fractured for a time, I have it generates a physics field that disables any fractured particles moving below a certain threshold. I haven’t dug into it recently myself, but I’ve heard there are some cleaner solutions in new nodes on the ue5-main GitHub.

[@beluga2342]

holy shit a tutorial for unreal engine 5 that i can actually hear thats crazy u get a like sir!

[@silvershadowfang]

Fantastic tutorial, thank you! being able to apply the concepts to pallets has been extremely helpful. In your project during the conclusion you would break the barrels into nice wooden chunks leaving behind metal rings, is there a way to have those get bent or dented like metal objects?

[@ThreeTreeDog]

Thank you, ive been looking for high level overviews for this, I couldnt locate any info on the exact relationship between hitpoints, mass and velocity of impactors... I built a machine to test this and logged the results to a spreadsheet to make it easier to figure out what "rigidity" I am looking for. Also, i thought great you can use this as a structural integrity system out of the box, so far from tests it looks like the GC does have static loading calculated but this only applies to other GC's on top of them but not primitives. Need further testing and setup to make sure its not the initial velocity from the object falling .1 impacting it on start. I haven't figured out a way in BP to dynamically increase the mass of a GC component, mass override doesn't work with GC, apparently.

[@nn-ib2lt]

Thanks bro! Very usefull!

[@meowme7644]

Very nice 👍

[@tianhang4656]

thanks for the content

[@ionizedgames]

This is great. Thanks for the detailed guide on how to fracture. My problem now is this entire geocollection breaks when any piece is hit. Any idea how to fix that?

[@kaustubhbagri7780]

Very good

[@rjs3590]

Really nice walk through example!! I’m just learning the chaos tool myself, is there a chart or console command for checking an objects performance consumption??

[@evelynschwab7436]

Not specific to chaos, I generally just test the performance using `stat unitgraph or just keeping an eye on the frame time. Not super empirical but does the job for me!

[@enigmabey]

Just came across this video after searching for hours about an advanced way of introducing chaos. I’m quite new to unreal so I don’t know if this is possible but, with the mesh fracture maybe one can detect the bullet hits around a column and break only the outer non-load bearing part of it, kind of like Battlefield’s Levolution system 13:33

[@thatFain]

Love the video, thanks for the explanations :) One question on your BP setup. Are you first displaying a static mesh and delete it on dmg taken and then you spawn the geometryCollection ?

[@evelynschwab7436]

Yup! That was to prevent the objects from having any kind of physics reactions until they'd been broken, specific to this use case

[@thatFain]

@@evelynschwab7436 Nice thanks, for the quick answer :). Exactly this is the problem I'm also having with the chaos system. I'll try this setup, thanks again :)

[@krinodagamer6313]

i love Chaos i cant wait till they get the hang of it

[@RV-bc9yi]

Hello, Thanks for your video, it's really good. I succeeded with the barrel and the separation of the parts but it does not break exactly like you. Is it possible to say a word about the BP and the Actor components you used?

[@olaufr]

I think the Brick fracture you are wondering about could be useful to simulate ruins, an clean stone or brick wall may be somewhat realistically turned into ruins like this.

[@evelynschwab7436]

It could be but for it to actually look decent the asset would need to be very linear and would need to match the fractured shape perfectly, at which point it would be more appropriate to build the shape from individual brick assets. I could see a use case for a game with extremely simple asset styles, but it’s odd that it’s so limited in its current form when the slice feature does something similar with more customisation.

[@olaufr]

@@evelynschwab7436 Sure, I guess this is a work in progress and may have some bugs too. I'd like to give it a try though using the Internal Strain Fields and a stonewall texture. What may be nice to make ruins is that each fractured brick form a cluster which can be further fractured using a less uniform fracturation method. This may work for a stone wall, even if the match with the texture stones is not perfect.

[@L0v0lup]

Hi, good video / guide. Do you have any idea why my brick wall with a metal piece on top (that piece is sliced as planar) holds together my whole wall? I basically followed you along with your barrel but did that with a brick wall... For some reason it only happens when i use it in conjunction with a anchor on the ground. Brickwall + anchor = works Brickwall + seperate metal piece = works All those 3 things together need about 2-5 impulses from the field to break :/ (Unreal 5.4)

[@borrowedtruths6955]

Sorry if I missed it, but how can I slow down the speed of the fracture. I want my player to hit the fracture object, breaking off pieces of it at a time, until it's all destroyed.

[@maxleveladventures]

This is solid and rare content. Thanks for adding to the very sparse amount of UE content out there. I hope to do the same once I learn more. However, I didn’t learn the solution I was hoping to find in this video. Do you know if there’s a way to fracture a mesh, simulate it falling apart, store that animation, then play it in reverse? I’m trying to create a platform that forms from a pile of rubble as the player nears the blueprint.

[@evelynschwab7436]

Thanks! I haven't tried it myself but you should be able to do that with chaos caching. As I understand it, you can record a destruction simulation then play it back in sequencer (and hopefully play it in reverse)

[@maxleveladventures]

@@evelynschwab7436 I very, very much appreciate the speedy response. I came to the same conclusion after a bit more searching and exploring the content examples level of about the chaos system (which is so fucking hard to dissect as a beginner 😅). However, I realized that I only need like 5-8 stones and I want the individual pieces to be bespoke, hand-modeled, so it'll probably be better to attach bones to each stone in Blender, animate it, then import into Unreal and use that animation data (which I also don't know how to do, but I'll figure it out). The chaos option seems like a better solution when you don't need precision and/or want to animate dozens to hundreds of pieces by hand. I’m sure I’ll come back to your video at some point because it provided some interesting examples and was really easy to follow. Cheers!

[@maxleveladventures]

@@evelynschwab7436 side note: I didn’t plan to do anything even minorly complex like this in my first unguided world creation effort. I just wanted to make a tiny scene with some pretty models I made in Blender. Now here we are, already down a rabbit hole of unnecessary mechanics on the second day of the project… 😂

[@DolecekRadim]

It seems the brick fracture will produce the mortar/grout piece since you don't have just a brick in the wall. You need to have a secondary fracture on it and ideally cluster pieces of grout into individual bricks. It is used in film VFX quite often, it's adding a lot to believability. In general, I am still a bit skeptical about doing these kinds of fracturing directly in Unreal, I would love to do pre-fracture in Max or Houdini for far more control, but I guess that is still not supported?

[@evelynschwab7436]

Yeah I’d much rather use Houdini but currently there’s no way to import any assets as geo collections, I hope there will be more support that way in the future or that the tools will evolve to allow more procedural freedom

[@leegregory756]

Hiya, thank you for such a highly informative video! I was wondering if you had dabbled with using UE to simulate destruction on props and then exporting them in their fractured state? There doesn't appear to be any documentation on this and simply using UE's "Keep Simulation Changes" doesn't work with destructibles. Appreciate any advice you can give.

[@evelynschwab7436]

I havent specifically, I wouldn’t say Unreal is a great tool for destruction sims that aren’t in real-time. The closest thing I know of is the chaos caching system for sequencer, which you might be able to export, but I don’t know much about it sorry.

[@miloszgierczak4806]

What are your geometry collection settings under "collision shapes", u change something to "collision margin fraction"? I have got some troubles with "jiggling" of my objects during simmulation. Also have u changed anything under the physics section / chaos solver in your project settings??

[@evelynschwab7436]

I usually stick with the default settings, but sometimes use the box collision shape if the object allows (such as for the barrel). I found the best way to reduce jiggling was to use sleep physics fields to put the objects to sleep when their velocity was < a given amount. Physics settings and solvers are all default!

[@AlexKolakowski]

Any tips if I'd like to platform on the objects and only break them with the sword?

[@QuiteDan]

I'm breaking some bottles. Is there a way to not generate internal geo and keep it hollow?

[@evelynschwab7436]

Not if the bottes don't already have a modelled interior, like what the barrels and boxes shown here have. If a mesh isn't already hollow with an extra layer of geo pointing inwards, Unreal will treat it as a solid object and fracture it as such

[@nomansdie8624]

Hey looks really good! How did you make the barrel? So I assume it's one object but the rings are separate and the wood base (so planks that go around) are together and then two more separated circles for top and bottom of the barrel? I wonder if it would have been better if you make barrel in blueprint (so like one plank, one ring and one circle - like the buildings in Chaos UE presentation) and then covert it to GC? How would that affect physics after you slash it. I guess that not too good as it would clip thru or jump around. Does UE calculate physics for each chunk after destroying even if you destroy only top of a building (for example)?

[@evelynschwab7436]

Thanks! You’re correct about how the barrel is constructed. The reason it’s all one mesh with seperate pieces is to make it easier to manage for the specific small small prop solution, but theoretically it could be made from seperate meshes. In my blueprint that would cause issues, but in general wouldn’t be an issue. Unreal does calculate physics for each “active” chunk, so in your building example the bottom part of the building would generally remain static while to top, destroyed part would be dynamic with physics calculations. The dynamic chunks would still collide with the lower static chunks, and have the potential to “wake” them and cause more damage if the chunks collide hard enough.

[@nomansdie8624]

@@evelynschwab7436 Thanks!

[@bebachkin]

Could you tell me, how is it separate parts? Is it separated somehow in the 3d software? How to make the UE recognize that there are separete regions?

[@evelynschwab7436]

@@bebachkin separated in the 3D software. I didn’t do anything extra in unreal to make it recognise that, just fractured normally.

[@Josh-fh5ox]

How are these objects working without anchor fields? Mine just immediately fall apart? 🤔 I couldn't get destructible barrels to roll like that. Really appreciate the breakdown of the tools though man.

[@djtc2093]

Great tutorial. In your opinion what would the best case be for creating realistic large calibre bullet fractures? So the impact would need to fairly round but also consistent. any idea?

[@evelynschwab7436]

Thanks! Unfortunately, you can't really pre-fracture for dynamic shapes like bullet holes, the best approach I find is to play into the grain of the surface that is being fractured. High calibre bullets have a lot of impact force so having objects smash into small fragments around the impact, rather than form a distinct hole, still usually looks fine. Games like Rainbow Six Siege and older Battlefield/Bad Company games do a good job with this. Worth noting though that smaller fractures like this are very performance-intensive, so often damage particles are used to make up for some potentially larger fragments like you can see me using for my props in this video.

[@djtc2093]

@@evelynschwab7436 Thanks for the response, much appreciated. What you say makes sense. How would someone achieve this though? I know it's not fracture. Any idea? kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZnvQoKCed62ll5o

[@evelynschwab7436]

@@djtc2093 I can’t say for sure but to me it looks like they’re using a render target to add bullet holes where the shots land. Can’t really know more without digging into the code. You might be able to do something like that with geometry scripting in Unreal 5, but it wouldn’t be an ideal solution.

[@mrhmakes]

Looks cool - will this work in sequencer for animations?

[@evelynschwab7436]

Somewhat, there are methods for caching destruction simulations for playback in sequencer but I don’t know much about that process

[@mrhmakes]

@@evelynschwab7436 ok thanks! Would it be safe to say that if I could get normal chaos to work in sequencer then anything created with your plugin should also be able to be duplicated in sequencer?

[@evelynschwab7436]

@@mrhmakes I wouldn’t say that for sure since I haven’t tested it, the prop system is designed for gameplay use so I didn’t add anything to make it work in sequencer. There would likely be issues getting the prop destruction to record properly if it’s using the embedded geo collections from my prop BP.

[@mrhmakes]

@@evelynschwab7436 OK noted - many thanks for the reply! Game FX looks awesome

[@StreamwaveProduction]

How do you get it so cubes break into boxes? Every fracture turns a box into a solid object. I want my GeometryCollection to break just the edges of a box.

[@driftmirror]

Your geometry needs to have some thickness to it for this fracture method to break it without closing the gaps. If your cube is just 6 planes all around, it will make the fractures pieces into solid blocks once it breaks apart. So just give your cube some thickness.

[@Gabriel-bj7gj]

At 4:25 a bullet hits the corner and the mesh fractures from the middle. Is there a way to make this work? I'm trying to make bullets deform meshes(like making holes or bulges, and 2 bullets in the same spot are needed to penetrate). Can the chaos destruction system achieve this? If not, what's the alternative? Anyways, great video!

[@evelynschwab7436]

Thanks! There isn’t a straightforward way to do that at the moment, and my system wouldn’t help with that. You could potentially achieve something like what you’re describing with a very densely fractured mesh, but it would be very expensive and probably not the best method.

[@Gabriel-bj7gj]

@@evelynschwab7436 I did some research and found out about geometry scripting. It looks good, but I'm not sure it works with custom meshes, for example a car. I've been trying to find a solution for this, but no luck so far... and here's the tutorial for geometry scripting: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f4WzkGt6pquNY8U

[@mikey7326]

Regarding the geometry of any abject you want to break, does it have to be double sided or can this work with something that is just a shell/ one external face?

[@evelynschwab7436]

It can work with objects that are just external faces but only if you want them to be solid, i.e. a concrete block. If you want something like a crate it needs interior faces

[@RealParadoxed]

How do I make it so when a object hits the chaos physics object you can control the velocity etc and create an event off of when it's hit?

[@evelynschwab7436]

Geometry collections have an event for when they’re broken that you can leverage, for controlling velocity you’ll want to look into physics fields

[@ukmonk]

UE5 is amazing but tbh I have been really disappointed in the lack of video tutorials. Thought Epic would have done a really good series but nothing, unless I have missed them? Yeah they have those long streams but sometimes its a couple hours for the 5mins that you need...

[@KillerDudeT19]

It's really hard to find good well layed out video documentation. That's the one downside about unreal engine vs somthing like unity. I've found that reading the documentation that epic has as well ass searching for KZbin videos about specific things vs trying to find a series that has everything you want to work well for me

[@williamtolliver749]

That would be fine if the docs weren’t so trash

[@RangePlusOne]

I have an performance related question; as I destroy the house and breaks into chunks the performance will start to drain. When the house has been blasted to chunks, and the debris starts “sleeping” (which I’m assuming is despawning) there is a momentary (quarter second) 30-40fps drop every few seconds which I don’t understand why is happening. I would assume if the debris/chunks despawn it would recover performance entirely like when despawning AI, but it seems that fracturing will have a permanent performance loss during the scene until it’s stopped and started again. Do you have any suggestions to not lose that 30-40fps drop that happens every few seconds?? Thank you!

[@evelynschwab7436]

I can't say for sure what's happening in your scene but you can use physics fields to forcibly put fractured particles to sleep when they are below a certain velocity, as well as disable their physics entirely. I use this in my prop kit to recover performance after a couple seconds of the break, there will always be a significant overhead until the particles settle a little though.

[@iansmith3301]

What destructible prop pack contained those boxes, barrels and pots?

[@evelynschwab7436]

It’s one of my asset packs www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/chaos-prop-destruction-system on sale at the moment!

[@miloszgierczak4806]

Okay, hands up! How de heck you have implemented a niagara particle systems to these chaos destructions? Can you recommend any learning video to this?

[@evelynschwab7436]

The particles are just spawning off the chaos break event in the blueprints with the geo collections. To prevent too many particles from spawning, they’re gated off based on the mass value of the break so that particles only spawn on large breaks.

[@miloszgierczak4806]

@@evelynschwab7436 UwU its really interesting. Have you figured out this by yourself? I have been serching for this for quite long time, every unreals' video is only talking about chaos and fields, but noone mentions the communication between niagara and chaos and workflow / pipeline connected to this.

[@evelynschwab7436]

@@miloszgierczak4806 there is some documentation on using Niagara with chaos destruction in the Unreal docs, and there are some good examples in the sample content project from Epic. That gave me a lot to go off before playing around with it.

[@miloszgierczak4806]

@@evelynschwab7436 i really appreciate your opinion in that topic! Thank you for this comment! Actually I must admit, your chaos destruction system setup is really impressive and you totaly nailed it. Especialy the fracture of wood. I dont know if it isnt the first chaos wood example all over the youtube :D be proud of yourself

[@AzureViking]

I am actually playing with this right now trying to see if I can make just a certain portion of an object destructible. In my case I want to see if I can make a tree destructible but only around the base where you would chop it with an axe.

[@AzureViking]

Actually nm, I figured it out. Now I just need to figure out how to get a weapon to damage it...

[@gabrielchcosta]

I have a question. Can you remove only one of the pieces from that cube when it takes a certain amount of damage, while the rest of the cube stays intact and does not fracture?

[@evelynschwab7436]

The damage is regional, so if you only applied damage within the region of that piece then yes it would be the only part to fracture. You can’t manually apply damage to an individual piece as far as I know, but that may have changed in 5.1

[@merited8379]

I want to see someone package a project with this stuff in it.

[@cptairwolf]

Would be nice if the fracture was more "realistic" in the sense that one swipe wouldn't completely obliterate an entire group of barrels but awesome tutorial.

[@Enkeria]

Been looking for a month, maybe you know since you got the feature. Once fractured, the pieces.. Allow the player just to walk pass it. Im using this in an FPS, and I've tried all the "logical" things without any solution. Collision off, player can't walk over, etc etc. Nothing works. Once its fractured, the pieces makes me fly away, and the sleep, is set fast but it wont delete "everything" just the minor pieces. Going insane. Anyway, thanks for interesting video.

[@jiwik731]

Can i find somewhere how to create an Actor BP using geometry collections? There is GC component for a BP but it does not destruct in the scene while hit. I need to add some sounds and effects to geometry collection while hit in its own BP not my pawn and it is all possible but the GC is solid after a hit and ignores the whole fact it is GC. How did you have these sounds done please?

[@evelynschwab7436]

I use that GC component in an actor BP as the root component and bind sounds and particles to its fracture events, I'm not sure why it does not fracture in your scene but I would suggest checking some of the common variables like the collision channels, fracture thresholds etc.

[@jiwik731]

@@evelynschwab7436 Oh god... i actually might forget to use it as a root. :D I will check it later. thanks.

[@junjiezhou1350]

非常棒，但是我还是不太清除怎么去实现，是否可以有一个完整的例子包含如何触发破碎，也许这样会更好 哈哈

[@michaeltran875]

I have a question. I purchased your asset. Would you happen to have a video tutorial to show how to set it up?

[@evelynschwab7436]

Hi, I don’t have a video for setup but there is extensive written documentation for setup linked on the marketplace page

[@michaeltran875]

@@evelynschwab7436 Yes, I saw it, and after I read it over, it’s straightforward to set up. Thank you, you are a lifesaver. I’ve been trying to do prop destructible for several months.

[@RV-bc9yi]

Ok, I've managed to do something not bad! I've created a "BP GeometryCollection" with a collision sphere, if I move slowly and I'm detected by the sphere, then all's well but if I move too fast towards the geo my character falls into the void, he passes through the ground, isn't that crazy? Any ideas?

[@27kmaster]

is there a specific method to get destruction sounds to play when the meshes break?

[@evelynschwab7436]

Not exactly, you can just get the break event from the geo collection and play a sound at the break’s location. I also adjust the pitch and volume of the sound based on the mass of the break.

[@27kmaster]

@@evelynschwab7436 i tried that and it didnt work, had to hunt abit deeper to find a working solution with bind events, props to ya mate the chaos system is still extremely lacking in tutorials and documentation

[@chadgtr34]

can you show us how to replicate the same fracture to multiplayer client?

[@orbitals5281]

When I fractured a mesh I made, when I hit begin play, it immediately breaks apart. What causes that?

[@evelynschwab7436]

Possibly intersecting collisions between the mesh parts, you might need to tweak the convex collision setup for those parts.

[@Nirossen]

Does anyone know how to automate the "explode amount"

[@user-vg7zv5us5r]

3:10 Aka "fragile materials".

[@Unknowable_Void]

Amazing video, not too advanced that a beginner can't learn a few basics and then run with what you have shown. I see a good use case for the Custom Mesh fracture for creating realistic edge piece detailing for a collapsing floor structure for cinematics. Much like what the what Jacob from Quixel has done in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/inKlqqCmbaatg7s Love your work, learning heaps :)

[@mohammedmmdoh1014]

For real

[@platinumpineapple9943]

Hey if u find any bugs with this tell me

[@zczc7092]

Hi, make a Discord channel for Q&A

[@pandaslovecake2020]

Dude your poor mouse

[@carlmarl6531]

For some reason when I use slice fracture, the geo collection stays in place, does not break, and is not capable of interacting with anything else in the world. I can even see through the front plane of my 3d object and look inside of it. When I re-generate the fracture, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Have you experienced this?

[@evelynschwab7436]

Odd, I have not experienced that sorry!