Concepts

What VAT is

Vertex Animation Texture (VAT) stores animation poses in a texture. At runtime the shader reads that atlas instead of skinning each character with a Unity Animator.

Main assets

Asset	Role
Baked Animation Set	Atlas, clip list, shared material, optional LODs
Baked Animation Clip	One animation: timing, looping, events, attachments
Vertex Anim Controller	States, triggers, and transitions

More details on the Baked Assets page.

State types

Type	Behavior
Idle	Rest clip
Locomotion	Forward / Back / Left / Right
OneShot	Plays once (attack, hit, death), then can return to locomotion
Loop	Starts from a trigger and keeps looping until another trigger leaves it

Runtime components

Component	Role
VertexAnimPlayer	Playback, triggers, blend, attachments, LOD selection
VAT LOD Group	Edits the set’s distance LODs
VertexAnimLocomotionDriver	Turns movement into Idle and directional clips
VertexAnimEventReceiver	Handles baked animation events
InstancedRenderSystem	Draws many VAT instances