# chenjd/Render-Crowd-Of-Animated-Characters

Animation Baker and Instancing for Animated Characters: Using GPU to implement large-amount animation characters rendering. The animation map for vertex shader to modify the vertex position of the mesh at runtime. Using GPU instancing to reduce draw calls.

Repository: https://github.com/chenjd/Render-Crowd-Of-Animated-Characters
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/render-crowd-of-animated-characters
Language: C#
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: animated-characters, draw-calls, animation-map, unity, gpu-instancing, baker, vertex-animation-texture, vertex-animation
Last push: 2024-12-28T22:33:56+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3321, "days_push": 613, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1774, forks 304 (observed 2026-08-28T04:05:34.378206+00:00)

## What it is
A Unity library that bakes skeletal animation data into an animation map texture and uses GPU instancing to render tens of thousands of animated characters with very few draw calls. It modifies vertex positions in the vertex shader at runtime, avoiding costly CPU skinning calculations.

## Use cases
- render large crowds of animated characters in unity
- reduce draw calls for thousands of animated models
- bake legacy animation into vertex animation texture
- render 10000 animated soldiers with 20 draw calls
- optimize character skinning cost on gpu
- render animated crowds in AR with AR Foundation

## When to choose
- you need to render massive crowds of skinned animated characters in Unity efficiently
- you want GPU instancing plus vertex animation texture baking
- you need URP support and shadow rendering for crowds

## When to avoid
- your project is not built with Unity
- you only need to render a handful of characters where standard SkinnedMeshRenderer suffices
- you need complex runtime skeletal blending rather than baked animation clips

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: graphics, animation, gpu-computing, simulation
- domain: graphics, simulation
- platform: game-engine, windows, cross-platform
- tags: gpu-instancing, vertex-animation-texture, crowd-rendering, unity, draw-call-optimization, animation-baking, shaders, game-development, gpu

## Member repositories
- chenjd/Render-Crowd-Of-Animated-Characters (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:34.378206+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T03:25:22.802237+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/chenjd/Render-Crowd-Of-Animated-Characters (fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:34.378206+00:00, sha 5de97fd152ba)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.