Monday, July 1st, 2019 Posted by Jim Thacker

RayFire Studios releases RayFire for Unity


RayFire Studios has released RayFire for Unity, a new version of its popular 3ds Max shattering and demolition simulation system adapted for use in the game engine.

In separate news, the firm has also released RayFire for 3ds Max 1.84, although the update doesn’t add any new features beyond January’s RayFire 1.83: it just adds support for 3ds Max 2020.

Previously a popular tool for 3ds Max destruction simulations
A key component of many visual effects artists’ workflows – users of the 3ds Max edition include Blur Studio and Pixomondo – RayFire is a geometry-shattering and rigid body dynamics system.

The new Unity edition takes core features from the 3ds Max edition, and adapts them for use in real time, including toolsets for prefragmenting geometry and for controlling runtime demolition sims.

The implementation is built on Unity’s own native particle and rigid body systems.

Pre-fracture and cache geometry, then demolish it at runtime
RayFire for Unity’s Shatter component pre-fractures a mesh into a range of patterns inside Unity’s editor, including slabs, wood splinters and Voronoi fragments.

A separate Rigid component (shown in the video above) demolishes objects at runtime. It doesn’t require geometry to have been pre-fractured, and can be used iteratively on the fragments it generates.

Further tools let users group fragments into clusters, or to control when demolition objects are activated.

There are also dedicated Blade, Gun and Bomb components, designed to trigger demolition in ways common in video games, plus a Wind component for blowing the fragments around.

Runtime demolition is currently supported only on Windows, macOS and Linux – mobile isn’t supported, and it hasn’t been tested on consoles – but geometry prefracturing is available for any Unity export platform.

In the beta thread on the Unity forum, lead developer Mir Vadim says that he plans to support runtime demolition on Android and iOS in future updates, along with multi-threading and Unity’s C# job system.

Pricing and system requirements
RayFire for Unity is available for Unity 2018.1+. It costs $170, compared to $385 for the 3ds Max edition.

Read more about RayFire for Unity on the product website

Read more about RayFire for Unity in the Unity Asset Store