Advanced Damage
Use Advanced Damage Model, under Settings - Deformation > Advanced Damage, adds accumulated section damage, nonlinear response, shear and buckling to the existing deformation settings. It is enabled by default in the current component class and applies to both CPU and GPU deformation.
Setup
- Complete the Deformable Mesh Component setup.
- Enable Use Advanced Damage Model on the component and tune the settings below.
- For impact-aligned GPU dents, select the GPU backend.
- Optionally add Damage Zone boxes and inspect the result with Advanced Damage Debugging.
Settings
These four values are dimensionless, not percentages or distances. The ranges below are the limits in the component's Details panel. Start with the defaults and change one setting at a time, using the same impacts and resetting damage between comparisons.
| Setting | Editor range | Default | Lower values | Higher values |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Section Damage Accumulation Rate | 0 to 4 | 0.42 | Sections accumulate damage more slowly. At 0, new hits add no accumulated section damage. | Sections accumulate damage faster and reach a strongly damaged state after fewer comparable impacts. |
| Damage Nonlinearity Exponent | 1 to 4 | 2.2 | Damage amplification becomes noticeable earlier, while section damage is still moderate. | Suppresses amplification at moderate damage; most of the increase happens closer to fully accumulated damage. |
| Shear Deformation Multiplier | 0 to 2 | 0.5 | Less extra amplification from glancing hits. At 0, this shear multiplier contributes no extra amplification. | Glancing hits receive more amplification; a straight-on hit with zero measured shear is unaffected by this setting. |
| Buckling Amplification | 0 to 2 | 0.85 | Less additional damage-dependent amplification near the impact. At 0, this buckling multiplier contributes no extra amplification. | More additional amplification where accumulated damage and local deformation influence are high. |
How to tune the values
- Accumulation: Compare 0.2 with the default 0.42 to slow repeated-hit weakening, or try 0.8 to speed it up. These are comparison values, not a universal vehicle preset. Accumulated section damage is stored between 0 and 1; the rate itself is not limited to 1. Setting the rate to 0 does not erase existing damage or disable basic deformation. Use Reset for a fresh comparison.
- Exponent: The damage-amplification factor is
1 + damage^exponent. At section damage 0.5, exponent 1 gives a factor of 1.5, the default 2.2 gives about 1.22, and exponent 4 gives about 1.06. All three reach 2 at section damage 1. A larger exponent does not mean more amplification at the same intermediate damage. - Shear: Compare 0, 0.5 and 1 using an angled collision. The extra factor is
1 + measured shear * multiplier, with measured shear between 0 and 1. Setting this to 0 does not remove the GPU renderer's other lateral or noise-driven movement. - Buckling: Compare 0, 0.85 and 1.5 after repeated impacts at the same location. The extra factor is
1 + amplification * damage * local influence, where damage and local influence are each between 0 and 1. Setting this to 0 does not remove all folds or noise from the deformation.
These factors interact with impact strength, radius, falloff, resistance and deformation limits. A factor of 2 here does not guarantee a dent twice as deep, especially when a deformation limit has already been reached. The CPU and GPU paths use the same section-damage factors, but their geometry calculations differ.
Direction-Based Damage
The GPU renderer uses the hit's direction, not just its location and strength, to orient the dent. For a blocking collision, the component transforms the opposite impact normal into local mesh space and ensures it points inward. If no usable blocking-hit normal is available, it falls back to a direction toward the mesh center; this is relevant to manually generated hits.
The shader builds an impact-aligned deformation area. Compression along the impact direction combines with lateral movement, noise and wrinkles to produce asymmetric dents, rather than simply pulling every affected vertex toward the pivot. An angled hit can therefore leave a different shape from a straight-on hit at the same location. This uses collision information; it is not a prediction of future motion or a full soft-body simulation.
| Contribution | Visible effect |
|---|---|
| Impact direction | Orients inward compression and the dent's local axes |
| Asymmetric footprint | Produces an elongated, uneven dent instead of a uniform spherical response |
| Shear | Changes the response to glancing impacts and contributes lateral deformation |
| Noise and buckling | Add local irregularities, folds and wrinkles |
| Accumulated damage | Increases the response to repeated impacts in an already damaged section |
Both backends use the advanced section damage, resistance, shear and buckling factors. The retained CPU geometry calculation still moves vertices toward its deformation origin; the GPU renderer uses the directional crumpling described above. Do not expect identical vertex positions between the two backends.
Direction is also stored with native replicated hits for replay. Manually reconstructing an old hit with only location and strength cannot preserve all of that information; see Replication.
Repeated Impacts and Structural Weakening
Repeated hits can increase the deformation response through accumulated section damage. Radius, falloff, noise, amplitude and maximum-deformation controls remain relevant; Advanced Damage does not replace them.
The model tracks damage per mesh section. It does not decrement the configured resistance of a Damage Zone box after every impact. See Damage Zones for regional resistance and Advanced Damage Debugging for the section-damage display.
These controls do not create a structural physics simulation or automatically damage a vehicle engine. Continue using impact events and Hit Zones for your own gameplay reactions.
Regional resistance
Add Deformation Damage Zone boxes under the DMC to configure softer or stronger regions. Without active boxes, the zone factor is neutral and the remaining Advanced Damage model can still run.
General damage accumulation, exponent, shear and buckling settings stay on the DMC. Zone type, resistance and blend width belong to each box.