Increase your game's animation performance with this VAT tool to populate your scenes with big crowds, stadiums, background NPCs, armies of warriors, or static characters you wish to bring to life.It works with Unity versions 2022.3.x and higher using the Built-in Render Pipeline (without URP or HDRP) or using Universal Render Pipeline (URP) or using High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP).VAT Baker Forge is the best and simpliest solution designed for baking character animations with skeletons (Generic or Humanoid, with retargeting) into textures, and play them in real time within the shader without using an Animator component or skinning — designed to populate scenes with a large number of characters at a very low performance cost.Along with this tool, it is included Mesh Forge, a tool that solves a case the baker itself can't handle on its own: characters whose body is split across several separate SkinnedMeshRenderer components instead of one (for example, head, body, and a necklace as three separate GameObjects, each with its own renderer).VAT Baker ForgeThis asset contains three versions of the VAT BAker Forge tool designed for three different scenarios:VAT Unity BuiltIn Pack: The main version and primary solution this asset was created for. Designed and adapted to work in Unity projects using the Built-in Render Pipeline (without URP or HDRP). This version of VAT Baker Forge was actually tested and developed in Unity 2022.3. and higher versions.VAT Unity URP Pack: Designed and adapted to work in Unity projects using the Universal Render Pipeline (URP). Its shader is based on the URP core, so it needs URP — it does not work in Built-in or in HDRP. This version of VAT Baker Forge was actually tested and developed in Unity 2022.3. and higher versions.VAT Unity HDRP Pack: Designed and adapted to work in Unity projects using the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). Its shader is based on the HDRP core, so it needs HDRP— it does not work in Built-in or in URPRender pipeline support: the main package contains the URP version (default), fully visible. Built-in Render Pipeline and HDRP versions of the shaders, materials and demo scene are included as nested .unitypackage files in Assets/VAT_Baker_Forge/Pipelines/ (VAT_Baker_Forge_BuiltIn.unitypackage and VAT_Baker_Forge_HDRP.unitypackage), as allowed by the Submission Guidelines for alternative render pipeline content. Double-click the one that matches your project to import it.Real-time physics bakerThe VAT Baker Forge tool can even bake into VAT real-time animations managed by physics systems in Unity with DOTS, like skirts, chains, hair, pendants, etc.VAT Mesh ForgeIf you tried to bake a character with its parts split up, you'd only get the animation for one of them. Mesh Forge merges those parts into a single mesh (keeping a separate material for each part, as sub-meshes) so the result can go straight into the normal baking workflow — no changes needed to the VAT Baker Forge itself.All the parts you combine must belong to the same character and share the same skeleton.Atlas generationAlso, if your combined character ends up with several different materials, you would normally set up a VAT Material for each one — this works, but it's repetitive, and every extra material adds an additional draw call per character.Thanks to the Atlas generation option of the VAT Mesh Forge tool you can obtain your combined mesh with a single material, requiring only one VAT Material instead of one for each original part.The C# scripts and shaders were written with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic), working from my specifications. I designed the tools and features, tested them in real Unity projects, and approved and corrected the results. The documentation was drafted with Claude and reviewed by me against the real behaviour of the tools. The package icons and logos were generated with Google Gemini from my prompts and then adjusted by me. The demo character, textures and animations were created by me in 3ds Max; no AI was used for them.
