Unreal 3 Phat editor

Lee3dee

Anyone have experience using the skeleton mesh PHAT tool? my mesh is bouncing/exploding off the floor of the tool. Is this normal? or are there any settings I should be messing with?

Thanks
-Lee

Kovac

I've built a handful of character/env physics meshes. Fill up that next post with some info + shots!

Edit: Ahead of time make sure you play with the weighting options of each collision and make sure the imported skeletal hierarchy in the side window is accurate to what it should be. Also, are you using cylindrical or box based collisions for this. There's dozens of little things that will mess with you so it's hard to gauge what you're exact problem is without more details.

Lee3dee

Sorry, wasn't sure about uploading videos at work. This is my current progress. I was able to get the bones to react to each other in the PHAT editor

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KPKqu7UZy4[/ame]

But when I test it in the level it has no collision on it. Even though I put the physicsAsset into the correct slot.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Te8e05z-Q[/ame]

In max, I have fractured a box and each box has a piece of collision, and a bone skinned to it. When I import the mesh into UT3 with the collision, it comes in without collision still. I must be linking it wrong or something.



Any thoughts??
Thanks
-Lee

Ben Apuna

It's literally been years since I've made any physics assets in Unreal so I might be way off here... but off the top of my head did you add it to the level as a KActor?

Kovac

Yeah Lee, is Ben correct? From it working in the phat editor that's exactly what I'd imagine it to be as well. For further debugging, try going to the KActor's object properties section and flagging bWakeOnLevelStart to true. This should cause the glass to drop as soon as you load the level, leaving it to be the gun needing to apply the force (bDamageAppliesImpulse defaults on but who knows). Also, do you receive and feedback at all if your character runs into it?

In regards to collision I'm quite certain you can't even have custom collisions for a KActor like that, so exporting them out separately would be pointless. Collisions are generated in phat so any further tweaking once you get it looking right in there shouldn't need to go back to max file since the ue3 is so wysiwyg oriented. That first video you posted looks like it should look fine with a few tweaks to settings or checkboxes.

Lee3dee

Thanks Ben abd Kovac

Yeah I placed it in as a skeleton mesh, I wasn't sure if you can make a skeleton mesh into a KActor. I just need it to react to weapons so that I can put a physical material on it, to emit the effect.

I know on Brothers In Arms, the artists had to make collision for each piece of the shatter, which was what I was trying to do, Using MCDCX_ for each collision mesh. But its probably simpler to use PHat primitives since they had a custom script.

I'll give your suggestions a try and post my progress later today.

Thanks
-Lee

Kovac

I don't know if UT3 has it in the editor or not, but the fracture tool can be tweaked to work well with what you're trying to do as well. Unfortunately I don't think it is but if so open the mesh in the static mesh viewer and try going to Tool/Fracture Tool and double check.

Lee3dee

I think the fracture tool was written in for Gears2. UT3 came out earlier. I found an actor class called GameBreakableActor and UTKActor, it allows for damage for meshes only. gonna test it with those.

Lee3dee

got it working during lunch today. Had to place the PhysicAsset into the level, not via actor classes or skeleton mesh. Not sure on the performance hit, but it works, just need to play with the settings more to get the glass to have more mass so 1 piece breaks others will fall.


Definitely need to write a tutorial for the mod community since there's very little documentation on this online

Kovac

Ah killer, I haven't seen that class before. Thanks for the heads up!

Ben Apuna

I'm glad you got it working

Once I had to make an avalanche of boulders the problem was not all of them would start rolling once triggered, some would just stick in place no matter what I did. If I remember correctly my convoluted solution was to make a kismet trigger to fire off some RadialImulseActors and LineImpulse Actors that got all of the boulders moving. In hindsight I'm not sure if it was the proper thing to do.

In your case maybe just editing the phat primitives might get the job done. Try to fit them a bit closer together and perhaps give them a slightly more of a exaggerated box shape rather than the flat plane shape you have right now. By doing that it might get them to bump each other more once the glass is shot.

Lee3dee

finished result for glass shatter
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrAtHHFLtjs[/ame]

rigging glass is a pain in the ass but when it finally works, it looks nice

nrek

Dude that was awesome, that one shard that flies past your head in the slo-mo made it perfect. Can you shoot the broken shards and have them react? Or do they become static once the main sim is done?

Lee3dee

Thanks The shards can be shot once they are broken they are still considered KActors. I can easily set up it up to where they will be destroyed after a few seconds. I was thinking of using them in a UT3 map but i'll have to test the glass reacting to players shooting and see how the frame rate is by keeping them around.

Filbot

That is awesome

ColinR

That was crazy good. Nice work Lee, looks awesome.

(watches again)

Ben Apuna

Yep that's pure awesome! It would be even cooler if the glass continued to shatter even further as it hits the ground possibly with particles? maybe that's asking for too much.

Lee3dee

thanks guys. I think adding more glass as it collides with the floor would kill the current frame rate. I'm been looking at how Mirror's Edge did glass shatter & Force Unleashed and they both do a similar effect, except on mirror's edge the glass is a static mesh that swaps with the skeleton mesh when shot. Glass can definitely be expensive and time consuming, I wish there was an easier way to rig the individual pieces.

Working on a nuke explosion is next on the list for the machinima. I plan on revisiting this see if i can do an car exploding with the windows shattering

|*BILLY$CLINT*|

Lee3dee wrote: »

I think the fracture tool was written in for Gears2. UT3 came out earlier. I found an actor class called GameBreakableActor and UTKActor, it allows for damage for meshes only. gonna test it with those.

Yes the Fracture tool was implemented into the engine for Gears 2 but you can use that same system in the Mirrors Edge Editor.

Lee3dee

|*BILLY$CLINT*|: great website btw! reading through your documentation on physx.

Test shot from the Machinima


working on the building crumbling and a more radial explosion, debris trails, etc

|*BILLY$CLINT*|

Lee3dee wrote: »

|*BILLY*|: great website btw! reading through your documentation on physx.

Test shot from the Machinima


working on the building crumbling and a more radial explosion, debris trails, etc

Wow that looks really cool...If you have any question or run into any problems let me know and I will see what I can do to help.