Crash with deformer graph on nanite mesh

Development Rendering
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Hi there,

We’re working on a game where our main character should get partially deformed when hitting the environment. The mesh is nanite and will take about 1/4th of the screen constantly.

We started exploring the Deformer Graph tool, as it’s a skeletal mesh, and WPO seems to be avoided in this case for better cluster occlusion. Unfortunately, the editor (v.5.7.1) crashes consistently when using the “Write Skinned Mesh” node of DG on a nanite mesh.

What are your thoughts about this?

Is it a known bug or is Deformer Graph definitely incompatible with Nanite meshes?

What would be the advantages of using DG instead of WPO in this case?

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Steps to Reproduce
Create a new Deformer Graph, with 2 nodes connected :

  • Read Skinned Mesh
  • Write Skinned Mesh

Open a skeletal mesh.

Make it Nanite.

Bind the new Deformer Graph to the mesh (Default Mesh Deformer parameter)

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Hi, currently nanite skinned mesh doesn’t support more advanced features like translucency or morphs, and as a result, isn’t supported with use of deformer graph. This is on the dev teams radar, and is something that we want to support in future, but at the moment we don’t have any specific timelines for when it’ll be available.