FAQ · Souls Destruction Framework

Does SDF modify my original Static Mesh?

No. Authoring captures a signature of the source before staging and compares it afterwards. If the signature changed during generation, publication is blocked with issue SDF-AUTH-SRC-007 rather than shipping a setup built on a mutated source. Generated assets are written as new packages next to the source.

Can I use it in Blueprint-only projects?

Yes, for gameplay: no C++ code of your own is needed. The destructible component, destruction profile, world subsystem, the hit sender components and the payload and result structures are exposed to Blueprint.

A compiler can still be required. The prepared 1.0.0 archives are source-only — they carry no precompiled binaries — so a project that uses them must build the plugin with Unreal’s supported Visual Studio C++ toolchain, even when the project itself is Blueprint-only. Packaging a game with a native plugin can also require that toolchain. See Installation.

Does it require Coalborn?

No. Coalborn is GreyFox Studio’s internal game project, used as a test bed. The plugin contains no Coalborn include, path, asset or configuration — that is verified by an audit in every phase report. SDF works in any Unreal Engine project that meets its stated requirements.

Does SDF automatically understand how a chair or a barrel should structurally break?

Within stated limits, yes. The wood presets are structure-aware: they recover the boards, panels and members that exist as construction parts in the authored mesh, preserve small hardware, and snap each part along its own axis. The semantic barrel preset goes further — it resolves body, hoops and end-cap roles and cuts the body into radial staves, and it blocks meshes whose roles cannot be resolved instead of guessing. The Glass preset splits a multi-material window into an unbreakable frame and independent panes.

What no preset does is infer joints or weak points that the source geometry does not carry: a chair sculpted as one welded blob has no members to recover. Ceramic, Stone and Generic remain deterministic Voronoi partitions of the volume.

Scope limitation

For props whose break must follow structure the mesh does not express, author the fragments by hand and drive them through the Swap-and-Scatter path, or fracture them manually with Unreal’s Fracture tools and point the profile at the resulting collection.

Can I provide custom debris?

Yes. The profile’s Debris array takes your own Static Meshes, each with a count range, a scale range and a local spawn offset, bounded by MaximumDebrisPieces. That path is used both as a primary destruction mode and as the fallback when a Chaos representation is unavailable.

Does it support Geometry Collections?

Yes. GeometryCollection is one of the two presentation modes, and the authoring pipeline generates the collection for you, including interior material assignment, collision and cooked simulation data. You can also point a profile at a collection you fractured yourself.

Does it generate a Dataflow graph?

No. SDF does not author a Dataflow graph, and the collections it generates ship without one. Fracture is performed by a deterministic C++ authoring backend driven by the authoring presets, not by a node graph you assemble by hand.

That is a different route to the same guarantee a graph is bought for. You point the pipeline at your own Static Mesh, pick a preset, adjust its parameters and generate; the same preset, seed, density and source always produce the same structure hash, so a setup can be regenerated at any time — including across a whole selection through Batch Regenerate, which a hand-built graph does not give you.

Note

The output is a standard Unreal Geometry Collection. Nothing prevents you from opening it with Unreal’s own Fracture tools afterwards, or from pointing a profile at a collection you fractured yourself.

Does it support SwapAndScatter?

Yes. SwapAndScatter hides the intact mesh and spawns bounded debris with a directional, random and upward impulse mix. It is both a first-class mode and the automatic fallback for GeometryCollection profiles when bFallbackToSwapAndScatter is enabled.

Can I use my own combat system?

Yes — that is the intended usage. SDF imposes no combat framework. Your code either builds an FSDFDestructionHit directly, or uses the melee, collision and projectile sender components, which turn contacts your systems already detected into payloads and handle duplicate suppression.

Can I use my own audio middleware?

Yes. Set bEnableBuiltInAudioPlayback to false and bind the audio request delegate on the component or on the world subsystem. Requests are emitted regardless of whether built-in playback is enabled, and they carry the resolved variation, volume and pitch multipliers, seed and event type.

Can I use my own Niagara systems?

Yes, in two ways. Assign your systems to the weighted variation arrays on the profile and let the built-in path spawn them, or disable bEnableBuiltInVFXSpawning and handle the VFX request delegate in your own presentation system. The Custom event with a named identifier exists for effects the framework has no built-in event for.

Can I batch-process assets?

Yes. Batch Generate, Batch Validate and Batch Regenerate operate on a multi-selection with a mandatory read-only preflight, explicit Ready / Warning / Blocked states, sequential execution, cancellation between assets and a CSV report per run.

Note

Batch Generate applies one shared preset and option set to the selection. Mixed material families should be processed as separate batches; there is no per-mesh semantic auto-classification.

Can I regenerate an existing setup?

Yes, and it is a protected operation. Regeneration requires explicit confirmation, a second confirmation when manual edits to a generated asset are detected, and it is blocked entirely while unsaved changes exist. It backs up the packages first, replaces the outputs in place while preserving their object paths, and rolls back if anything fails.

Does it support multiplayer?

No. Network replication is not implemented and not validated in this version.

Stated honestly

There is no replicated state, no server authority model and no RPC surface in the shipped runtime module. In a networked project, each client would evaluate hits locally, and outcomes would diverge. Do not plan a multiplayer feature around SDF until replication support is announced in the changelog.

Is Chaos simulation deterministic?

The authoring fracture is deterministic: the same preset, seed, density and source produce the same structure hash. Presentation selection — sound, VFX, decals, debris scatter, loot — is deterministic for a given seed. The Chaos simulation of the resulting fragments is not claimed to be bitwise deterministic.

What happens when the budget is saturated?

Gameplay destruction always succeeds. Presentation degrades: an object that cannot obtain a Chaos representation uses the debris fallback and reports bUsedFallback, and an object destroyed past the per-frame budget reports bPresentationSuppressedByBudget. See Performance.

Do destructible objects tick?

Mostly not. The convenience Actors and the hit senders never tick, swing and collision windows are explicit state, and debris cleanup is centralised and timer-driven. The one exception is optional: the destructible component enables its tick while its profile turns on fall damage, to follow a falling intact prop.

Ticking is not the only per-frame cost. A Simulated intact prop is a Chaos rigid body and costs physics time even asleep — see Performance.

Do props fall when the object under them breaks?

New generations do. Every preset family publishes the intact prop as Simulated: it rests on its support, and when a destructible support is actually destroyed, SDF wakes the bodies resting on it so they fall. It is not a structural support graph, and props resting on something that is not a destructible are outside that wake.

Content you generated before this feature is not converted silently; it keeps its behaviour until you run the explicit migration. A composite glass window always stays Static. See Intact physics and fall damage.

Why does a pot break when it falls, but not a statue?

Fall damage is a profile setting. Ceramic and Glass Vessel generations enable it (60 cm and 80 cm safe distances); Stone and the wood family keep it off. Above the safe distance, the landing deals (drop cm - safe cm) / 100 × damage per metre, and that hit still has to pass the profile’s usual power, speed and health rules. Enable fall damage on a Stone profile — and raise its landing power — if you want statues to crack on impact.

Which engine versions are supported?

Unreal Engine 5.7 and 5.8, as two separate Win64 editions verified on 5.7.4 and 5.8.2. Use the edition that matches your engine; content assets are engine-specific. No other version is claimed — see Installation.

Is there a loot system?

There is a generic post-destruction hook, not an inventory system. LootMode offers Disabled, ExternalOnly, SpawnLoot and RevealExistingActor, with weighted candidates, spawn chance, quantity and deterministic scatter. It emits an FSDFLootRequest so your own inventory or economy system decides what a drop actually means.

Where do I report a problem?

By email — see Support. Include the plugin version, the engine version, reproduction steps, the issue code when one is displayed, and the batch CSV report for authoring problems.