TECH ART OUTSOURCE - Vertex Animation

A vertex animation baking tool, shaders, and animation system for Unity DOTS/ECS.
Render tens of thousands of models at the same time each with its own animation state.

Features

• Vertex animation model baker
  • Multiple animations (stored in one Texture2DArray)
  • LOD generation
  • Prefab generation
  • Animation book generation
• DOTS animation system
  • Simple API
  • Animation library and books
• Shaders
  • Lit vertex animation shader
  • Interpolation
  • Normal encoding and decoding
  • Shader graph support

Model Baker

Artist friendly GUI for converting models.

DOTS Animation System

Sample code to play an animation.

protected override void OnUpdate()
{
    float deltaTime = UnityEngine.Time.deltaTime;

    Entities.ForEach((Entity entity, ref VA_AnimatorComponent ac) =>
    {
        // Get the animation lib data.
        ref VA_AnimationLibraryData animationsRef = ref ac.animationLibrary.Value;

        // Set the animation index on the AnimatorComponent to play this animation.
        ac.animationIndex = VA_AnimationLibraryUtils.GetAnimation(ref animationsRef, animationName);

        // 'Play' the actual animation.
        ac.animationTime += deltaTime * animationsRef.animations[ac.animationIndex].frameTime;
    }).ScheduleParallel();
}

Shaders

Lit example shader (build in shader graph).
Full shader graph support.

Install

Installing from a Git URL

Documentation

Getting Started

• Example 1: Mainly used for testing.
• Example 2: Contains an animation system that shows how you could setup animated characters and a spawning system to test performance.
• Example 3: MonoBehaviour example for if you are not using DOTS.

Extra Info

This project is developed by the TAO (Tech Art Outsource) group at BUAS (Breda University of Applied Sciences).

There are plenty of improvements to be made, e.g.:

• (Optional) per bone vertex animation (instead of per-vertex), this can reduce the texture size needed to store the animations.
• Add option to export rotation map separately instead of compressing into the alpha channel, this will make it slower but higher quality.
• The LOD generation is very basic and slow, the ability to swap out algorithms would be cool.
• Split different modules into separate packages (LOD generation, animation baker + shaders, and the animation system)?
• Multi-material and/or sub-meshes support.

Used By

• Vedelem: The Golden Horde
• Your project?

LICENSE

Overall package is licensed under MIT, unless otherwise noted in the 3rd party licenses file and/or source code.