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Shader Graph Baked Rigidbody Animation using Vertex Animation Textures (Vadim, Sept 2019)

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Vadim, Sept 2019

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Description

Kaburgan's Sept 2019 Story Programming piece bakes rigidbody VAT in Unity 2019.2 LWRP Shader Graph 6.9 without external DCC tools. A castle destruction sample replays recorded physics on one combined mesh.

VATRecorder captures child motion in Update or FixedUpdate. VATMeshGenerator merges parts, stores pivots in vertex colors, and assigns part IDs in alpha or UV3 beyond 256 children. VATGenerator writes dual position and quaternion rotation textures.

Shader Graph uses CalculateVAT from VATCustomNode.cginc to decode frames and rotate normals. VATGPUPlayer feeds VATAnimation through instanced materials for SRP Batcher playback.

Screenshots compare physics, precision modes, and sparse frames smoothed by bilinear filtering. Sample project files ship with the article.

For intermediate Unity shader users reducing draw calls on baked destruction. A clear niche tutorial in the VAT space.