hi im a beginner but i’m really curious and get ahead of myself a lot, but i’m wondering if i can (as the title says lol) break and simulate a part of a nanite-displaced landscape or mesh? what i wanna achieve is; when a character is walking on a landscape (or mesh), i want it so the character leaves actual footprints that move/physically alter the ground. for example, when the character is walking on a gravel alley, they kick up rocks and leave imprints on the ground. i know the simple and easy solution would be to just add rock meshes on the floor using like PCG or smth, but i’m just curious if it’s something in the realm of possibilities to do something like that
No.
Obviously you are new at it so the why is performance.
First of displacement should never be used. it’s a dead technology.
Secondly, a terrain usually has one vertex per meter in unreal.
You could make more dense meshes manually - what’s what is normally done. However it’s the same story - you won’t get enough resolution to justify cost and have a nice final result within Unreal 90% of the time.
Thirdly, anything you “kick” within this context should be done with Niagara for a somewhat cost-effective result. Via material shaders and probably ignoring collisions altogether (niagara can simulate for cheaper though, so it is an option there).
overall:
The cost is high, the dev time and tech stack is not public knowledge, you have to come up with your own based on experience and what other tutorials give you ideas for.
If you want to put a month’s dev time into this, do so. but be aware that you won’t be able to get the final game to run over mobile if you use unreal - that’s actually probably besides if you develop this out or not since the engine is total crap performance wise… unless you stick to older things like 4.18/.25 ish. Then maybe you could expect something to run Ok.