Making a field of earth look digged

Hey guys,

i’m a freshmen studying Games Engineering and i’m currently working with UE4.
In my project the player can plant seeds into a flat squared field of earth(it’s a flat plane with ground texture), if he prepared it first ( with a shovel because i don’t have a Hoe Mesh).

I’d like to make the earth look like it’s been dug up, so the player knows he can now plant seeds into it.

Maybe a pile of earth spawns in the middle after using the shovel?
Or more like a field with deeper lines in it? ( wouldn’t make sense with a shovel but anyway)

Anyway, i’m looking for ideas to realize it.
I haven’t been working with Blender yet but i have to learn it eventually.

I found this on tf3dm.com, but i only need the pile of earth not the whole mesh.

Is Blender my way to go?

Thanks for your help

Yes, just create your dugged up mesh in blender, uv map, add a texture and material, export it as fbx, import it into the engine and spawn these meshes at the position the player used the shovel on :smiley:

If you actually want to have dig lines in the plane mesh, its going to be a bit more complex as you would need to deform the mesh at runtime, maybe using the World Position Offset material node + a dynamic heightmap that you paint when the player uses the shovel.

Texture Painting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BE2c5TBvV4&user=Peter%20Stefcek
World Position Offset: 1.10 - World Position Offset | Unreal Engine Documentation

Hey, were you able to get this working? Asking for a research project of mine. Thanks!