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UDK Dynamic destruction

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RaPtoR_v9600 polycounter lvl 4
For past 2 months i heavily worked on dynamic destruction, i must say that it was fun doing that but its time to move on :) here what i got so far

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oL3PQVfWzQ

And also here is my experience from using APEX and UDK

What i tried and failed to destroy in UDK

Can't destroy trees in UDK i tried various technique but there is no way to destroy a tree with good results.
Only thing that can be done is to chop tree in 3D modeling program and import it to UDK as separate pieces then put it in map as rigid body and hope that player will believe that tree is destroyed but results are pretty bad. And time to set up kismet sequence alone are painful.
I tried with palms and results are bad, i chopped a palm tree in four pieces imported them in UDK and then put palm tree together as rigid body in UDK then went to kismet and made sequence to change how rigid body behaves when it was hit with shock rifle or rocket launcher its fine for small numbers of tree but for large numbers that is just bad

I cannot imagine how to deform terrain in UDK i think that currently can't be done.

What can be destroyed or blow up in UDK

Well the answer is almost anything with APEX plugin destroying walls is pretty fun and add some good particle effects the effects are very good. In same way that can be done with wood fences and crates, etc.

But the only problem is that to make my video destroying stuff i needed to completely turn off dynamic lightning, because as soon i started destroying stuff my FPS plummeted from 120 to 20.

First i was thinking that it was because of number of chunks generated in APEX then i made some optimization, but changes are small in performance issue, then i removed some of the chunks and replaced it with crude self made particle effects
But that also didn't make any difference, then i turned out dynamic lightning and FPS with large numbers of APEX chunks stayed solid and didn dropped.
I think because most of my map or should i say test ground were made from APEX meshes that are dynamic and UDK don't perform well with large numbers of dynamic meshes.

But interesting is that if meshes are not destroyed and even with dynamic lightning on the FPS stay solid, but when they are destroyed the performance issue start.

What APEX cannot doo :

Cant accept decals yeah cant believe neither it sucks big ass , the destruction results would be 100% better if APEX meshes can accept decals but i found no way to do that.
Don't work in kismet, the only thing that you can do with APEX meshes in kismet is set damage, and that is it you cannot set it do take damage and then to perform some action like fire up particle or animation.

For some reason the lightning is bad just look at this picture

BAck.jpg

This is back side or where sun light wont affect directly APEX mesh but its completely black like there is no bounce lightning or something i tried to make custom material with custom ligtning but that didn't made any difference.

Only ting that can be done is to add sky light

Front_skylight.jpg

But in that case interpactor also is brighter, its bad because i want to combine interactors and APEX meshes to create illusion of fully destroyable wall or house, but with difference in lightning that is hard to doewithout obvious difference in lightning.

Front side is better but still some difference in lightning


Front.jpg


Also i realized that lightning APEX meshes behave badly when normal map is applied to material the normal map need to be heavily toned down

If anyone can find solution to this give me a hint.
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