Is there currently a method for eroding a surface in UE4 during runtime? I am working on a dirt racing game and I’m looking into the possibility of creating a dirt surface that is geometrically dynamic. Kind of how a vehicle creates ruts while driving through the mud.
The only tutorials I’ve seen that are remotely close are tutorials on destructible meshes, which I suppose could work, but I would be working on a way smaller scale, with way more smaller pieces.
Any advice would be appreciated!
Hmm, something like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OFvVtmCp4U there is a technical breakdown tho its bad visualized https://www.artstation.com/artwork/bVKdn. From what I can see he is using line trace to trace the location from maybe the center of the wheels to the ground and spawn a tiny decals (so you can get those smooth tracks when the car turns) on impact location every 0.1 sec. I am not sure if the performance will be bad or not when you have like 10k decals lingering after your car. But you can always fade out the material and destroy the decal actors. 
Thank you for your post. That is very similar to what I’m looking for. He did an excellent job there.
Ideally, I’d be more interested in actually dynamically changing the geometry of the ground mesh, so that physical grooves could gradually develop. I’m sure that would be very expensive in regards to processing though.
Hmm, take a look on the POM (parallax occlusion mapping) material node. You can change the track highmap textures with a deeper one (darker) when “line trace/wheel has gone over the same place”. Just giving you some theoretical ideas.
Awesome, I’ll look into that. Thank you for your time. Have a splendid day!