Download OpenVAT v1.1.0 for Blender

OpenVAT:

OpenVAT for Blender is a kit that enables VAT baking directly in Blender for Artists and animators working inside the platform. Vertex Animation Textures allow complex animated deformations to be played back as Vertex Offsets on the GPU across inexpensive vertex shaders. OpenVAT builds upon traditional VATs by expanding them into the animated modifier stack, dynamic simulations, and geometry-node working sets for runtime consumption, allowing the artist to maintain a proper art pipeline and extend run-time applications beyond traditional consumption.

This approach means that anything from a generated mesh to geometry node animated waterfalls can become procedural VATs, empowering the artist for final game engine renders. By baking mesh deformations into textures, consumption is run on the GPU in real time instead of using complex rigs and heavy runtime simulations. OpenVAT is distinguished from other VAT tools by its native approach to Blender from start to finish, capturing deformations directly from the Blender-evaluated dependency graph.

This means that Geometry Nodes, modifiers, shapekeys, world-space collisions, and other vertex-level animations can be captured, as well as AnimAll, a third-party Blender plugin. Therefore, anything from deformation across multiple procedural steps, such as crazed water running down a stone wall, to complex character animations, can be exported for real-time consumption across game engines, methods otherwise not supported (at least in terms of ease of use and proper consumption) by FBX or Alembic formats.

Some great features of OpenVAT:

• Bake complex deformations at low runtime cost on the GPU, with minimal runtime overhead. Use on crowds and minimal poly props or world design.
• Bake simulations (i.e., soft body/wind/cloth) for use in real-time programs, even with low polygon count or assets on low spec machines.
• Bake instanced animation from a single VAT so hundreds of animated VATS can be rendered with just one call; randomization can occur with material parameters.
• Bake morphing and other layered deformations for complex animations such as faces or muscle movement.
• Bake with shaders in mind, whereby distance fields, world-space logic, or gameplay data can manipulate VAT playback.

OpenVAT provides a solid foundation for real-time deformation consumption. One can effectively "sculpt" motion through deformation at scale. However, it is not ideal for anything other than stable-topology polygonal meshes. For instance, it does not work with fluids or voxel data (yet!) and works best on data with defined motion already captured, with minimal space for topology changes or FBX precision mishaps. Yet plans for another version render fluids and similar volumetric data possible, making this release 0.1 just a taste of what's possible down the line.

"OpenVAT" Samples:

Download OpenVAT 1.1.0 for Blender from the below link now!