Vertex Animation Textures for Crowds

Mohamad Salame, Technical / Environment Artist at SuperNatural Studios introduces how to use Houdini and Unreal Engine for vertex animation textures (VAT). Learn how to bake Houdini KineFX crowd animations into textures and play them back in Unreal Engine with material World Position Offset. Why do all that you ask? Optimization! Using skeletal meshes for all characters is CPU intensive, VAT can achieve similar results with minimal cost. VAT is also good for VFX like mesh deformation and fluid like simulations that will perform well in game, it’s just a static mesh with a material similar to grass wind materials.