The Fracture output rollout has parameters to control how the output of the modifier/operator is processed.
Center pivots: when enabled, fracture particle meshes will have their pivots centered.
Preserve source particle: when enabled, the largest fracture mesh will be assigned to the source particle (and the source particle will not be deleted), thereby preserving any additional properties/binds the source particle may have had which would otherwise be deleted.
Area threshold %: if the ratio between the largest fracture mesh’s surface area and the input mesh’s surface area is not greater than this percentage, the source particle will not be preserved.
Preserving the source particle can be useful in cases where you want to preserve binds or other unique properties assigned to it, even after it’s fractured. However, there may be some cases where you may not want to preserve those properties - for example, if the source particle is fratured into sufficiently small enough pieces. By adjusting the area threshold %, you can control how big the largest fracture mesh must be in order for it to preserve the source particle’s properties/binds. For example, an area threshold value of 90% means the largest fracture mesh must have at least 90% of the surface area of the input mesh, in order for the source particle to be preserved.
Preserve normals: when enabled, explicit normals of the input mesh will be preserved in the fracture meshes.
Cull elements by surface area: when enabled, fracture meshes will be culled depending on whether or not they have a surface area smaller than the specified thresholds.
Min area: the absolute minimum surface area a fracture mesh must have, to avoid being culled.
Min area ratio %: the minimum surface area a fracture mesh must have, relative to the largest surface area of any given fracture mesh, to avoid being culled. For example, if set to 1%, all fracture meshes whose area is less than 1% the area of the largest fracture mesh will be culled.
Cull internal faces: when enabled, non-manifold faces that are internal to a fractured mesh (ex: remnants of slice mesh that didn’t fully cross the input mesh bounds), will be removed.
Select fracture faces: when enabled, fracture faces (faces derived from the fracture mesh(es) in the fracture operation) will be added to the output mesh face selection.
Print timings: when enabled, PRISM-specific function timings will be printed to the MAXScript listener, providing a full breakdown of the speed of each PRISM function during the fracture operation. These timings do not include the time spent to compute the fracture operand points and meshes themselves - only the actual fracturing operations performed by PRISM.
There any many situations where you might only want to send part of a fracture result to another particle event. For example, when performing an edge fracture on a mesh, you may only want to send the resulting edge fragments to the next event, while keeping the rest of the fractured mesh in the current event. You can perform this filtering with Property Test operators, or other methods, but by simply specifying how many of the largest fractures you want to keep in the current event (in that example: 1), you can achieve the same result without having to tweak specific values and settings related to particle size/volume/etc.
Interior fractures: when enabled, fractures that originate from inside a fracture mesh (ex: inside of a fracture mesh with volume) will test FALSE for any operation conditions (ex: send out). This setting should only be enabled if a fracture mesh has volume (has shell thickness applied to it).
Exterior fractures: when enabled, fractures that originate from outside a fracture mesh (ex: outside of a fracture mesh with volume) will test FALSE for any operation conditions (ex: send out). This setting should only be enabled if a fracture mesh has volume (has shell thickness applied to it).