Ive been intergrating Bullet physics engine sections, As bullet is really a complete seperate system that doesnt need to know what it’s interacting with ina few small test ive had bullet running at the same time as Physx. The reason im working on Bullet is A) it’s opencl based GPU versions works on all cards NOT just Nvidia kit B) The soft body missing from UE4 at point. Im working on a F1 / Podracer style game cross that needs soft/hardbody destruction, So what ive been working on at the moment is a match solver that Blends rigid body physics with soft body through Bullet. My system will not be physically correct in anyway (trying to do that realtime is not possible for many years im afraid). What ive been working on is a bezier spline system that proportionaly distorts tessellated geometry based on material definition, Mass, Velocity.
Basicly all main work is Rigid body work, but using GPU collision detection through Bullet the objects have basic spline definitions that get processed as soft body’s which then just proportionally distort and weight vertex of the surface for a limited period (for example when a car crash’s it’s surfaces actually behave more like fluids than solids but that period of fluid state is very short before the object has lost it’s forces and can be returned to being rigid body and vertex positions fixed. E.g a metal panel gets hit by a fast solid moving object it’s shape change is actually very short, once the impact forces have dissipated it’s a solid again and can go back to rigid body control. Simple but got some OK results so far. I would love to implement some Particle spring oscillation routines like rigs of rods and BeamNG do but thats way beyond me right now.
That sounds really promising KingBadger! I am very interested, and hope to see soft body physics soon! I am also working on a open world vehicle racing game, lately I have been busy with other projects, but I am looking for ways to improve the realism for vehicles (not just collision, better handling, ability to do burnouts, under/over steer and many more), but to do so I need to venture into the code again…
Once you have it complete, is for your game? or would you possibly create a plugin for marketplace? - wink wink
