Skinned Mesh Combiner MT - Character Mesh Merge, Atlasing Support & More
Skinned Mesh Combiner is a tool that combines all of your character's meshes into just one mesh. This greatly reduces the Batches generated, bringing great performance gains!
Skinned Mesh Combiner allows you to combine your characters' Skinned Meshes in a very simple and intuitive way. Merging can be done in the Editor or in Runtime. Also, the merge will not affect your character, your animations and other things will remain intact even after the merge.
The SMC can convert Non-Skinned meshes to Skinned and then merge them together, normally, with the character. With SMC you can also undo an already made merge, make your changes and then merge again!
Some Features of This Tool
● Can be used in Editor and Runtime. You can also undo merges made in both.
● It has a completely non-destructive workflow.
● Fully compatible with HDRP, URP and the Built-in RP!
● It can generate combined meshes with 64,000 vertices or more.
● Supports Tiled Textures and negative UV values.
● Compatible with Blendshapes, will continue to work after merge.
● It can reduce the Batches of your scene by up to 97%.
● By merging the meshes, can generate an Atlas texture for best results.
● Can combine the character's meshes even while he is animated by the Animator.
● It supports the legacy animation system as well.
● The animations and other things remain intact even after merge.
● Supports all types of Materials, Shaders, UVs and Meshes.
● Supports multi-material meshes (meshes that use more than 1 material).
● The files generated by the merge can be saved in your project.
● Supports Prefab creation.
● You can still add or modify things in your character's bones (such as swords, weapons, and other objects) even after the merge.
● The material used by the mesh resulting from the merge is defined by you.
● Easily select which meshes you want to combine. You don't need to modify your scene!
● Great documentation.
● You can manage meshes that have already been combined.
● It has a very complete and documented C# API for mesh merging in Runtime.
● Merge your character's accessories too! Convert Non-Skinned meshes (Mesh Filter + Mesh Renderers) to Skinned Meshes and then combine everything! This is very useful for characters who use accessories made of static mesh (such as swords, hats, glasses, etc.).
● Can convert combined mesh to static mesh. You can also undo this whenever you want. This can be very useful in some situations for optimization purposes.
● And more…
Technical details
The Skinned Mesh Combiner currently has 4 mesh Merge Methods. Each method combines in a different way and has its own characteristics. See below.
- About "One Mesh Per Material" (Merge Method)
This merge method has the ability to generate combined meshes that have no visual difference when compared to unmerged meshes. In addition, it is a very fast and easy to use merge method.
This merge method combines all meshes that share the same material into one mesh. In other words, if you have 30 meshes and 20 meshes use material A and 10 meshes use material B, at the end of the merge, you will have a single mesh that uses 2 materials. Materials A and B. This mesh resulting from the merge will continue to use the original A and B materials.
With this method of merge, you will still have the same quality as the original meshes, even in the mesh resulting from the merge. The combined mesh will use the same original materials and still have great performance gains!
This method is the easiest to use, as it does not require any special definition of merge parameters as everything is automatic.
- About "All In One" (Merge Method)
This merge method will combine all meshes into one, it will combine all textures as well, generating an Atlas. On the other hand, textures can have a quality reduction compared to the previous merge method, because textures are combined in an Atlas.
This merge method will combine all meshes into one, and will even merge textures. This merge method can yield even greater performance gains, but it requires more knowledge to define the merge parameters. This method also supports all maps like Normal Maps, Height Maps and so on.
- About "Just Material Colors" (Merge Method)
This merge method does not work with textures and is intended for developers who do not use textures in their Materials, but only use Colors.
This merge method will combine all meshes into a single mesh and generate an Atlas texture that has all the colors from all the original materials. In the end, this Atlas texture is assigned to the mesh resulting from the merge, it will remain colored normally, just as it was colored before the merge.
Because this merge method does not work with textures, this merge method does not support maps like Normal Maps, Height Maps and so on.
- About "Only Anima2D Meshes" features (Merge Method)
This merge method was developed exclusively for users of the Anima2D tool from Unity Technologies! The Skinned Mesh Combiner MT detects your 2D character's "Sprite Mesh Instance" components and combines all skinned meshes generated and sprites in just one mesh and one atlas. In the end, only 1 mesh and atlas remains and only 1 draw call is generated. Take advantage of the merge features of the Skinned Mesh Combiner MT, with the convenience of the Anima2D tool, and enjoy the extra peformance!