SKELOT - Instanced Skeletal Mesh Rendering v5.4–v5.6 enables the rendering of tens of thousands of skeletal meshes with minimal CPU usage directly within the Unity Editor, without requiring custom materials. Simply adjust your SkeletalMesh's LODs, create an SkelotAnimCollection DataAsset, and apply the SkelotComponent. The system is highly optimized and as lightweight as the InstancedStaticMeshComponent, making it ideal for TopDown and RTS games.
New features include:
- Component-less design for easier usage
- Virtual Shadow Map Support
- Runtime AnimCollection generation
- Curve Sampling, with curves cached and accessible from materials
- Instancing with negative scale
- Modular Mesh support, allowing multiple USkeletalMeshes to be attached to a single instance (similar to Leader/Follower poses)
- Dynamic transitions generated and cached at runtime, reducing VRAM usage
- Dynamic Pose functionality, enabling instances to switch to a Dynamic Pose and be bound to a USkeletalMeshComponent
- Fast Recast Functions
- Socket Transform Support
Updates and optimizations:
- No limits on bones or influences; now supports up to 65,535 bone indices and 8 skin weights
- Animation sequences are generated at load time, reducing disk footprint
- AnimCollection uses DerivedDataCache, significantly reducing rebuild time
- Only skinned bones are sent to VRAM; skin weights are now sourced directly from the SkeletalMeshes
- Spatial culling with SIMD-optimized code for improved performance
