Like Johnny before me;
Just a warning for everyone getting all happy about this functionality.
Indeed it's possible. It's a lot of fun to play with this too.
Having these tutorials made must have been a tremendous amount of work.

But! This isn't a viable alternative to the current methods of breaking stuff.

1st of all, this method is unstable. The higher the amount of assets and interaction in your
level, the sooner you are going to experience weird stuff happening with this.

2Nd, It is horribly taxing on your system except for the most basic of usage.
No, that's not 1 wall and 1 tree but meaning a proper designed level with everything in it :-)
Keeping your cutshape large and thus limit the number of possible bools does help
but only up to a point where you start wondering why you didn't prefragment cause
it would have looked so much better that way.

Also talking from experience here. I've tested this method every way I could imagine and after hours of trial and error just had to discard it for stability and performance reasons.
Pity! No need to believe me, just consider yourself warned ;-)

Imho what CE3 SDK needs is a proper in-editor fracture tool like the one in UDK (*sigh.. I know*)

http://eat3d.com/free/udk_fracture

It limits you to 150 or so chunks but that's more then enough for your average destructible.
It's also very easy to setup assets that you've already imported as destructibles this way.
Maybe someone from Crytek will take notice

Thanks, And it did take a lot of work to figure out and make a tutorial.


Yes indeed, this method is extremely buggy!




Yes Use only when it makes sense and be strategic. This is not to replace current approaches to breakable assets!!!!!

Taken from cryengine docs.

"General performance guidelines:

Keep breakable object very low poly.
Keep boolean object very low poly.
Use breakable objects sparingly in levels, for interesting/strategic gameplay situations.
Create and use Surface Type parameters to limit how often a boolean occurs.
Create and use Surface Type parameters to limit the maximum number of booleans a single object can take.
Performance can lag noticeably when multiple shooters are firing rapidly at a single breakable object, causing multiple booleans simultaneously – to avoid this lag, try not to place boolean breakable objects in an area populated with a lot of shooters."



1000000% aggree life would be so much easier!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where do i get Crytek plugins for 3Ds MAX ?

Plug-ins are in Tools-folder of Free SDK, i guess..

Thats boolean destruction on the videos. Procedual destruction needs to be prebroken.

sorry but they are referring to the same thing. procedural destruction is not pre-broken hence the name "procedural" i mean no disrespect but that is not true.

I have a problem.
I did everything like in tutorial, but my mat_concrete_breakable didn't appear in material editor.
I think problem is in .pak files. I unpaсked GameData.pak and Scripts.pak (WinRar), then i changed MaterialEffects.xml, SurfaceTypes.xml and physics.lua.


If i try change files in .pak archives and save archive, i get a mistake ("the archive is damaged")
Can u help me please?

Anyone?

What archiver are you changing with? And are you saving as .ZIP or .RAR or what? And why aren't you working outside of PAK files during development? I always unpack all PAK files and use the extracted data rather than the actual PAK files. You can keep both but the extracted data have priority over the PAK files. That way you can keep the PAK files as backup and make your own (while maintaining correct folder structure etc) when the development is finished.

I using unpacked archives too, but if i change unpacked files nothing happens. Cryengine use archives, and i don't know why...
look:


But if i place objects to game\objects\... i can place them in editor.

I tried to use WinRar to pack my archives (.ZIP, then rename to .PAK), but cryengine geting crash.
I tried pack archives with compression and without compression.

the reason you are having issues is because your material effects XML in in the wrong directory. It's supposed to be in "Cryengine_Root_Directory\Game\Libs\MaterialEffects\MaterialEffects.XML"

and you should never use the .pak files. you need to extract all the .pak into the game folder and merge and overwrite when it asks. hope this helps!!!!!!!!!

Important: to extract, use 7zip. once 7zip is installed just right click the .pak file and select "Extract here"

also in your "physics.lua" file you used back slashes, but you need to use forward slashes.

Thanks for help, but it still doesn't work.
If i didn't tired you, help me please
I did everything you said (change physics.lua and correct unpack archives with 7zip)
If i shoot my objects with surface type concrete_breakable appear just "No surface type! Assign something to this!" or horror bug:

P.S.
What Excel i should to use? 2007 or 2010? I used 2010 to work with MaterialEffects.XML and saved in 2003 format.
Also what objects i should use? BreakableObjects, Brush or GeomEnity?

2010 is what you should use and save, not save in 2003, even if it says you would lose compatibility, information, etc stiil save in the version you are in. the reason for the no material popup when you shoot is because the materialeffects.xml was done improperly. please upload your "surfacetypes.xml", materialeffects.xml, and bulletimpacts.xml so that i may fix it for you!!!!! thanks

hi people! i was also having problems getting this to work but i got it in the end! my problem was the gamedata folder! every other .pak file extracted is ok but the gamedata.pak has a libs folder in it that overrides the libs folder in your game folder! so i removed the gamedata folder leaving the gamedata.pak there and my libs folder works now! hope that helps others get this working! peace

you can actually have particles if you define a "breakage_carve" effect in the surfacetype (similar to how "breakage" is defined). another way to get chunks is to have them as 'negative' sub-geometries inside the main carve geom (it's obviously more expensive though).

overall, the tech is not very suitable for per-bullet updates, since every operation complicates the mesh and has a small chance of failing. ideally it should be set up in such a way that the asset is completely eaten away after a reasonable amount of hits (couple of dozens maybe). best to keep the carve geom low-poly (since it's the main factor in increasing complexity); it's less crucial for the main geometry. i suppose it should be possible to add details with fancy shaders