SKELOT - Instanced Skeletal Mesh Rendering

Render tens of thousands of skeletal meshes without pain directly within Editor with very little CPU consumption.

no need for customized material, just adjust your SkeletalMesh's LODs, make an SkelotAnimCollection DataAsset and then use SkelotComponent. well optimized as light as InstancedStaticMeshComponent. highly suitable for TopDown/RTS games.

Skelot V3 now available for UE5.5 (older versions still use legacy Skelot)

New version supports VirtualShadowMap and comes with different design , so read Migration Guide before updating.

• New : Easy to use Componen-Less design

• New : Virtual Shadow Map Support

• New : Runtime AnimCollection (now you can generate AnimCollection at runtime )

• NEW: Curve Sampling Supported. Curves are cached and can be sampled from materials.

• NEW: Instancing with negative scale is supported.

• NEW: Modular Mesh supported. several USkeletalMesh can be attached to one instance (similar to Leader/Follower pose).

• NEW: Dynamic transition. transitions are generated and cached at runtime when needed, eats less VRAM.

• NEW: Dynamic Pose . instances can switch to Dynamic Pose and be bound to a USkeletalMeshComponent.

• New: Fast Recast Functions available now.

• New: Socket Transforms Supported.

• UPDATE: No more Bone or Influence limit. uint16 bone index and skin weight added, up to 8 influence is supported now.

• UPDATE: Animation sequences are generated at load time. AnimCollection takes less disk size now.

• UPDATE: AnimCollection uses DerivedDataCache. rebuild won't take minutes anymore.

• OPTIMIZATION: Only sends skinned bones to VRAM . SkinWeight is taken from SkeltalMeshes now.

• OPTIMIZATION: Spatial Grid for culling + SIMDified Codes.

Technical Details

Features:

• Supports Modular Mesh. easily attach/detach skeletal meshes to the instances.
• Supports Dynamic Transition. blend from sequence A to B smoothly. (transitions are generated and cached at runtime when needed)
• Supports Dynamic Pose. (Instances can be marked as dynamic and be filled with whatever you want. physics simulation and AnimInstance is possible now).
• Anything is done inside Unreal Editor
• Frustum Cull + Spatial Grid + LOD
• No Anti-Aliasing and Motion-Blur artifacts (writes accurate velocity)
• Uses skinning instead of Vertex Animation technique (less VRAM usage + animations are shared for skeletal meshes with the same skeleton)
• Fully dynamic with simple StructOfArray design (destroy and spawn thousands of instances every frame)
• Supports Sockets and Attachments
• Simple LineCast through Customized PhysicsBody
• Supports PerInstanceCustomDataFloat (can be accessed by material)
• Blueprint Support

Code Modules:

•  Skelot (Runtime)
•  SkelotEd (Editor)

Number of Blueprints: 2

Number of C++ Classes: > 30

Network Replicated: No

Supported Development Platforms: All

Supported Target Build Platforms: All (only Win64 and Android tested till now)

Documentation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LnxMjQwv1GfKlyzScTGzK73228_L4ZopjruCJ4sG600/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.qgh1ttdmsmsn