Unity plugins-Crowd Animation GPU Instancer-Crowd Animations

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2024.05.20 updated plug-in version

file size: 128.2 MB

version: 1.1.6

original Unity version: 2018.3.4 or higher

Crowd Animations is an out-of-the-box solution that supports the use of a large number of animated characters in high-performance scenarios. CA (Crowd Animations) adopts GPU Instancer core functions and adds GPU skinning technology to GPUI indirect instantiation solution and GPU culling technology. This combination helps you take full advantage of GPU instantiation in Unity to deal with your animated characters.

feature

-instantiation of indirect GPU with skinned meshes. -GPU cone, occlusion and distance culling. -compatible with VR. Suitable for single-channel and multi-channel rendering modes. -supports standard, LW, HD, and general rendering pipelines. -Custom shaders are supported (manual settings are required). -Animation blending (up to 4 animations). -supports multiple skinned mesh renderers and submeshes. -LOD groups are supported (all LOD grids must use the same equipment). -Bone connection. -support the root movement. -you can use custom shadow distances according to the prototype, as well as select the LOD used to render shadows. -automatically detect instances that have been added and removed without any additional code. -supports rigid bodies and physics. -customize the animation event system. -easy-to-use interface.

Crowd Animations supports two different animator workflows:

Mecanim Animator: you can use Unity Mecanim Animator to process animation state machines as usual, and GPUI will read animator state from Mecanim Animator. Therefore, you can use existing animators and scripts with Crowd Animations so that you can directly combine indirect GPU instantiation and all GPUI functions, such as GPU cone and occlusion culling. This workflow improves GPU performance while rendering skinned meshes, but this is not an ideal solution for projects constrained by CPU, as Mecanim Animator still creates overhangs for each instance.

Crowd Animator: you can use Crowd Animator, GPU Instancer API to process animation clips within GPU, and determine which animation to play at a given time. This workflow requires you to write your own script (or use a visual scripting tool) to deal with the animation state manually-but it also helps to take full advantage of GPU Instancer, because Mecanim Animator does not create any overhang.

current limitations:-does not support animation layering and masks. -reverse dynamics is not supported. -Mobile platforms are not supported. -Animation blending uses linear interpolation, which means that very different mixed animations can lead to incorrect skinning effects. Platforms supported by

:-DirectX 11 or DirectX 12 and shader model 5.0 GPU (Windows)-Metal (macOS)-OpenGL Core 4.3 (Windows, Linux)-Modern console (PS4, Xbox One)