Poking holes in existing assets meshes

Hi all

I’m hoping someone can guide me in the right direction. I have a requirement to essentially poke holes into existing assets, similar to fracture, but targeting only a specific region of the asset.

For example, if I have a wall, I’d like to be able to mimic something going through the wall. The majority of the wall will be intact (though, should show damage around the affected area) but the central point should fracture and come out of the wall. The bits should then break into smaller pieces and be visible around the impacted area.

As the locations for these holes can be pretty static, I’ve tried localising a hole using cell fracture in blender, and then using this tool: GitHub - JoshRBogart/unreal_tools: Blender 3D scripts for storing vertex data for use in a vertex shader. to export the resulting animation and then import it into UE5.3 (though, I’m having a few issues with that, too).

So, my question is, is there a better way and if so, what is it? This seems like a standard destruction use case (bullet holes through walls/windows etc.,) but I can’t seem to find anything on this, and the blender path is quite difficult to complete.

Any advice/guidance appreciated.