I want to fracture a mesh AND split the uv’s so that i could use a unique texture that doesn’t switch uv’s after a fracture. I don’t have $60 to buy an expensive addon and I don’t think I have the experience to program this. What are my best options?
Well I think you will have to learn to program this, but as Habitablaba commented, there are plenty of tutorials for that - a lot of them free. I’m afraid its pretty impossible to successfully make a game without a decent amount of code.
That being said, I think the best way for you to do this would be to have your regular mesh and a “fractured” one as a separate model. Set a trigger to switch out the meshes upon impact (I’m assuming the mesh you want to fracture is something the player can destroy. Unfortunately basically any time you have something interacting with a player, you’ll have to set up that logic).
You can do this with more than one model if you wish - think of a racing game, every time you bump something with the car, the base mesh is switched for increasingly damaged ones. You can use the same texture if you want, or variations of it painted to show more damage - burn marks, scrapes, whatever.