Navigation Mesh
One of the most crucial aspects of any AI, especially in video games, is the ability to navigate the environment in a sophisticated manner. In Unreal Engine 4, there is a way for the engine to tell the AI which parts of an environment navigable and which parts are not. This is done through a Navigation Mesh, or Nav Mesh for short.
The term Mesh is misleading here because it's implemented through a volume in the editor. We will need a Navigation Mesh in our level so that our AI can effectively navigate the playable bounds of the game world. We'll add one together in the following exercise.
Unreal Engine 4 also supports a Dynamic Navigation Mesh
, which allows the Nav Mesh to update in real-time as dynamic objects move around the environment. This results in the AI recognizing these changes in the environment and updating their pathing/navigation appropriately. This book will not cover this, but you can access the configuration options via Project Settings...