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Wondering if anyone here can offer some advice on the Cell Fracture add-on.

I am trying to fracture some very high-poly triangulated 3D scans but it seems that the Cell Fracture add-on takes it upon itself to simplify the base mesh on it's own and the resulting fractured objects are very low res.

I looked into this and I see that about 2 years ago, the bundled Cell Fracture add-on had a lot more options than what are available now in 2.91. Specially, it appears that there was once a 'Simplify Base Mesh' option in the Cell Fracture setup (along with numerous other options) but they are no longer present in the add-on.

Even though it would appear that the 'Simplify Base Mesh" option has been removed, is it plausible that the add-on is applying this feature during the fracture process?

I would like to avoid Cell Fracture from simplifying my mesh. I am also curious about why the current version of Cell Fracture has fewer options available than it appears to have in previous versions.

Example:

My original mesh before fracturing:
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The result. A decimated/simplified low-poly mesh:
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Current Cell Fracture options (v 2.91):
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Previous Cell Fracture options (v 2.8 - notice the 'simplify base mesh option, and others):
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(as seen in this youtube vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5guh5naT-XM)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

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Sorry for the late reply, but I have been running into this problem as well and managed to find a solution. I have a pretty high poly vase model I wanted fracture:

enter image description here

I run into the same problem you did, where the Cell Fracture add-on was decimating my model. It took me a while to figure out what was going on.

enter image description here

The answer to the problem lies in the settings menu for the add-on. I found it while fiddling around with the add-on and trying everything to try and fix the issue. Note that this is the newest version, and there is no checkmark that disables model simplification. However, by checking "Debug-Boolean", the add-on, for some reason, will not simply your model. The other settings did not matter and you can still adjust them to your preference.

enter image description here

As you can see, there is a nicely fractured vase that is free of decimating. The debug option does come with the drawback that you have to apply the Boolean modifier on each generated piece if you want to manipulate them, as high geometry boolean interactions are very slow.

I don't know if the debug option was intended to disable simplifying, but it does, and it works. I don't understand why they removed the disable simplifying option from the newest build, but I hope it can be added back. Anyways, best of luck on your work!

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for looking into this. You arrived at the exact same solution as I did. I should have come back to edit this thread sooner. Your method of using the debug boolean seems to solve the issue and you're correct, it's quite a pain as each modifier has to be manually applied. It's certainly a good enough work around for now. I hope that they will take a look at this in a future update. $\endgroup$
    – kslaggs
    Apr 13, 2021 at 23:12

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