Electronic – Footprints for SMD electrolytic capacitors

If I could get a ceramic capacitor at the capacitance of 10uF and within my voltage requirements, which from my initial searches I can, what problems would I experience if I were to change, if any?

Some circuits (like some linear regulators, for example), require a certain minimum ESR from the output capacitor, which could cause the circuit to oscillate when using a ceramic but not with an electrolytic.

In a precision circuit, a ceramic might not be preferred due to microphonics, but in those cases you probably wouldn't want an electrolytic either.

Otherwise, ceramics are generally preferred. They'll have lower ESR, they're not polarized, they need less voltage de-rating, and so on.

Finally, when searching SMD footprint standards, the common packages seem to be 0402, 0603, and 0805, where they increase in physical size respectively, but also power rating, which suggests to me I should use as large of a package as possible

Usually you choose the smallest package you can get away with because you want to fit as much circuit as you can in the smallest footprint.

Also, for ceramics, the larger sizes (1210 and higher) can have reliability issues because they can be cracked if the board flexes.

I suspect that the reason for the different footprints is to allow for the different heights of different parts.

For example, a SMT ceramic capacitor is typically about as tall as it is wide. While a "typical" 0402 resistor I just looked up (here) is 0.5 mm wide, but only 0.35 mm tall.

Because the capacitor is taller, it needs a longer "toe" in its footprint to allow a good solder fillet to form (I haven't checked if this is actually what's different between Altium's resistor and capacitor footprints).

Altium's footprints are just a reasonable guess at good footprints for typical parts in each category (resistor, capacitor, inductor). To really optimize your design for high manufacturing yield, you should consider the actual height of each part number in your design, and account for your manufacturing process: for example, reflow and wave soldering have slightly different requirements for optimum pad sizes.