Hello!, Im working on a survival game and the tree cutting aspect is fairly important to me, i know there are a million of ways to implement this but most of them are fairly “cheap” in therms of the most simple solution (Making the tree simply fall when you hit it enough times, etc ). The most dynamic system i have seen thus far is the one Implemented in the Forest where as you hit the tree it draws an actual 3d cut on the tree , being the most inmersive and clean solution i have seen
Not the best video but here is an example of what i mean
As you can see as the axe hits the tree it actually breaks parts of the tree where the impact took place, So you can visually see how much more you need to cut until the tree finally falls ( and only the upper part )
Ideally id like to recreate this as closesly as possible but besides doing simple shaders my knowledge of the visual side of UE4 is fairly limited … How would i exactly approach this? Using a Shader?, A procedural mesh between the impact point and the tree trunk?
You could always hide the targeted tree from the foliage and replace it with an identical standalone actor with a mesh that that has several animation frames of being chopped down. I think the second part is what they’re doing above. If you added some decent particles it might look pretty good.
as antidamage said, im pretty sure they are doing that, you get de transform of the foliage tree and replace it for and actor with the behavior that you want.
There is a post somewhere here that explain how interact with foliage. I will edit this post if I find it.
Antidamage:Hey, while thats a good alternative wouldnt that only work for one direction?, I mean a player can cut a tree from pretty much any direction so if i use a single animation set for cutting im fairly sure that it would only be setup for one direction rather than all the possible ones right?
SaxonRah:The system itself would be pretty simple, as long i can cut the tree from any given direction it should be fine… And i see So something along using the UE4 Destructibles for the tree trunk would work well?
Yeah, but you need an artist to fine tune the destructibility parameters of the object in a 3rd party tool to make it look more like wood splintering and not concrete breaking. info here the tool used is physx lab
Thanks everyone for the feedback, and also Thanks SaxonRah it looks like the destructible solution seems to be the most fitting one for what i have in mind
Most likely tree trunk (or its reachable portion) is procedural and tree uses 2D array specifying cut depth per tree segment. I do not recommend trying to implement this kind of feature in your game by yourself. You’ll waste a lot of time and gain very little, because it is a cosmetic feature.
In case of UE4 it makes sense to look into Apex Destruction instead.
Or like Saxon said, destructible mesh.