Fracture

Break geometry into pieces, each carrying the physics metadata a simulation reads.

What it does

Fracture breaks a mesh into pieces for destruction. Geometry goes in and comes back as fragments carrying physics metadata: per-piece mass, volume, and centroid, plus adjacency data so a Physics Joint node can auto-constrain neighbouring pieces back together. Interior cut faces are tagged, so they can be shaded or shattered differently from the original surface.

There are two fracture strategies. Voronoi scatters (or accepts) sites and splits the mesh along the bisecting planes between them: brittle shatter, fast, and controlled by piece count and seed. Convex voxelises the mesh and runs a watershed decomposition into roughly convex chunks, the shape physics engines want for collision proxies rather than visual breakage.

When to use it

ParameterTypeDefault
geometryOneOf([Collection])
fracture_sourceOneOf([Collection, Vec3Array])
fracture_modeString"Voronoi"
voxel_resolutionNumber64
piece_countNumber20
seedNumber42
piece_offsetNumber0
interior_noiseBooleanfalse
noise_amplitudeNumber0.100
noise_frequencyNumber5

Gotchas

Piece Offset creates a visible gap between pieces, useful for exploded previews, but it changes piece silhouettes. Return it to 0 before baking final collision shapes for physics.

Piece Data and Adjacency are only populated for Voronoi fractures, since Voronoi cells carry the per-piece IDs that data is grouped on. Convex mode's region-boundary output has no such IDs, so those outputs come back empty. That is expected, not a bug.

Fracture Source only shapes the break pattern in Voronoi mode. With nothing wired in, Voronoi generates random sites internally, controlled by Piece Count and Seed. Convex mode ignores Fracture Source entirely and decomposes from the voxel grid.

Voxel Resolution only applies in Convex mode. Raise it for cleaner collision pieces on large or detailed meshes, at a noticeable cost in speed.

Worked example

  1. Wire a mesh into Geometry.

  2. Leave Fracture Source unconnected and adjust Piece Count and Seed until the break pattern reads well.

  3. Turn on Interior Noise and raise Noise Amplitude for a rougher break.

  4. Nudge Piece Offset up to preview the shattered pieces separated in space.

  5. For a physics simulation, switch Fracture Mode to Convex and tune Voxel Resolution, then feed Pieces into a rigid-body setup. Use Adjacency to auto-constrain neighbouring pieces with Physics Joints.

See also

Cube · Mesh · Convex Hull · Geometry (meshes)