Navigation Mesh
One of the most crucial aspects of any AI in video games is the ability to navigate the environment in a sophisticated manner. In UE5, there is a way for the engine to tell the AI which parts of an environment are 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 Nav 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.
UE5 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 | Navigation Mesh | Runtime Generation...