How to make a mesh explode?

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
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Upon overlapping a projectile. Like make the mesh destructible and break and fly up a little bit?

Anyone know? thanks

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bump bump

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You might be asking one of three questions.

  1. destructible chaos static mesh
    So I’m guessing you’re asking about the skeletal mesh and how to make it a destructible mesh.
    This is relatively simple.
    Just find the last pose of the animation you’re using for the death, then there should be a button somewhere that says “save pose as static mesh” or something along those lines. Google a tutorial or something for that bit.
    Then you just follow a separate tutorial for destructible meshes and how to make them work.

  2. Of course if you’re asking how to make it explode with a particle system, just spawn an explosion particle (there’s one included in starter content) at the location of your mesh and destroy the actor. You can play a sound/camera shake too if you want.

  3. Dismemberment
    if you want to dismember your actor, that just requires going into the Physics Asset of your skeletal mesh and destroying some connections between different collisions for the ragdoll. There are also tutorials on this.

So in conclusion, if you want:

  1. a crumbling effect – google a tutorial on skeletal mesh to static mesh, then destructible meshes
  2. an explosion effect - just do the afformentioned particle system and destroy the player actor (or hide them)
  3. dismemberement - google a tutorial on dismemberment; there’s a codelikeme tutorial (despite his very slow videos) that you can skim through in his ALS TPS series.
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For now I will probably just try the first method to keep it simple. I made a static mesh from a frame close to the end of the run animation. Dragged that mesh into level, went into fracture mode for the editor. Hit new and created a new geometry collection, chose uniform and hit fracture like 3 times. Went back to selection mode for the editor. I created a new blueprint actor (destroyedbp), added a static mesh, chose this new static mesh. In the runner’s bp’s chose to create actor from class (the destroyed or fractured mesh) before the actor is destroyed upon projectile overlap. Tested and adjusted height accordingly to look realistic for the mesh trade.

Right now it is like a Medusa effect. When a runner is hit with a projectile it is like they “freeze” is the best way to describe it. So the actor spawns correctly and correct position but not seeing any breaking of those meshes. I tried adding an impulse in the Z on begin play to the destroyed bp. No effect, created a new physics material in collision, still nothing. Oddly it is not letting me tick simulate physics on that mesh. I guess what I want to do here is send the parts straight up and up and out for a second or so then destroy the actor /mesh.

Thanks for trying to help me, any help is appreciated!

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Hey there @usa423! When trying to break Chaos geometry collections on demand, I usually recommend using a chaos physics field. This should help you make that statue crumble or even explode if that’s what you’d prefer! Here’s a tutorial on how to do that that also goes over more uses of the fields in later videos. Let me know how it goes!

Disclaimer: One or more of these links are unaffiliated with Epic Games. Epic Games is not liable for anything that may occur outside of this Unreal Engine domain. Please exercise your best judgment when following links outside of the forums.

And here’s more information from the documentation on the fields themselves:

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