説明
Bake Vertex Animation Textures inside Unreal, or import them from Houdini. Eight VAT types, one wizard.
Documentation Page
Eight VAT types. One wizard. Stay in the engine.
Vertex Animation Textures let you play thousands of animated meshes for the cost of static ones: crowds, destruction, cloth, fluids and particle effects baked into textures and played back by the material. VAT Management Suite puts the whole workflow inside the Unreal Editor. Bake from Unreal's own assets, import what your Houdini artists export, and manage every VAT set in your project from one window.
▸ Four bakers, no external software
Bone — bakes a skeletal mesh animation into bone position and rotation textures. Uses up to four bone influences per vertex; the baker warns you when a mesh has more.
Vertex — bakes per-vertex offsets and normals from an animated mesh.
Alembic — bakes an imported Alembic Geometry Cache, so a heavy simulation plays back as a lightweight mesh.
Niagara Sprite — captures a Niagara particle simulation into textures for replay.
▸ Import from Houdini
If your team already exports VATs from Houdini's SideFX Labs tools, the Import Wizard brings them in for four simulation types: Soft Body (cloth, flesh), Rigid Body (destruction), Fluid (including topology-changing liquids) and Sprite (camera-facing particles). Point it at the exported textures and data, and it builds the Unreal side: texture settings, materials and a ready-to-place mesh. Houdini doesn't need to be installed on the machine doing the import.
▸ One place to manage them
The Import and Management Suite shows every VAT set in the project with its type and frame count. Regenerate materials when you change a setting, preview playback, and resample a bake to every Nth frame to save memory.
Materials are generated for you, built on shared shader includes for each VAT type. If you write your own shaders, the same includes are there to use.
▸ Runtime sockets
A small runtime module lets gameplay follow a baked animation: a socket data asset and a tracker component attach props, effects or other actors to a point on a VAT mesh as it plays. Blueprint functions expose the same data.
▸ What's new in 1.0.3
This update carries three releases' worth of fixes: multi-row vertex bakes now play correctly everywhere, the Frame Sampling control works, several editor crashes are fixed, undo covers generated assets, and UE 5.8 is supported. The runtime module is no longer restricted to Windows, so a project using the socket components can package for any platform.
▸ VAT Management Suite or EQLabs Pro?
The suite is also part of EQLabs Pro. Buy the standalone if VAT is the only part of your pipeline you need help with; choose Pro if you also want the other EQLabs tools.
▸ Technical details
• Engine versions: UE 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7 and 5.8
• Modules: an editor module (Windows editor only) and a small runtime module for the socket components, which is not restricted to a platform. The editor tools never ship in your game.
• Plugin dependencies (all stock Unreal Engine): Niagara, Alembic Importer, Geometry Cache
• Includes an automated test suite that runs in any project
• Documentation and support: eqlabs.studio
▸ FAQ
Do the Houdini importers need Houdini installed?
No. They read the textures and data that Houdini exports, so you can import VATs from a teammate or an asset pack.
What does it add to my shipped game?
The editor tools add nothing. The small runtime module is included when the plugin is enabled, so the socket components can work in your game.
Does it work on macOS or Linux?
The editor tools run on the Windows editor only. The runtime module packages for any platform.
What about Unreal's built-in VAT tools?
If they cover your case, you don't need this. VAT Management Suite adds the Houdini import path, four bakers and a management view in one place, plus runtime sockets.
Are updates included?
Yes. Buy once, and future updates are included.
═══ FEATURE BULLETS (10) ═══
• Eight VAT types in one plugin: four bakers and four Houdini import types
• Bake Bone, Vertex, Alembic and Niagara Sprite VATs inside the editor
• Import Houdini Soft Body, Rigid Body, Fluid and Sprite VATs with one wizard
• Materials generated for you, on shared shader includes
• One management view for every VAT set in the project
• Frame Sampling: bake every Nth frame to save texture memory
• Runtime socket data and tracker component to attach actors to VAT playback
• Undo covers generated textures, meshes and materials
• UE 5.4 to 5.8
• Stock Unreal dependencies only: Niagara, Alembic Importer, Geometry Cache