I think I solved this. It’s funny how that can happen after you spend an entire day looking into something and trying different things, but once you ask for help you immediately figure it out.
Steps taken to implement:
- Drag all the Static Meshes into the level at once - important that they all had the same origin offset from Blender export. So they appear in their correct positions and orientations as if they were already put together.
- While all the meshes are selected, switch to Fracture mode, select “New”, save the Geometry Collection wherever you want.
- Now the Geometry collection behaves as one until it sustains enough “Damage”.
I’m looking into implementing the damage via Blueprint instead of relying on “physical” damage as provided by the Geometry Collection class. Probably something like this:
Thanks for reading.