Vertex Animation Studio vs AnimToTexture
AnimToTexture is free, made by Epic, and already in your engine. For a lot of jobs that settles it. Here is where it stops.
Both tools bake skeletal animation into a Vertex Animation Texture. They differ in what happens after the bake.
Use AnimToTexture
One or two characters, baked once, placed by hand.
It is free and it is already installed. If you are baking a handful of props or background actors and you are comfortable wiring the materials yourself, there is no reason to spend money.
Use Vertex Animation Studio
An actual crowd, with LODs, placed in the editor.
Every LOD baked in one pass, materials generated for you, and a Crowd Editor to paint thousands of instances into a level.
Side by side
| AnimToTexture | Vertex Animation Studio | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free. Ships with the engine. | Paid, one-off, on FAB. Free updates. |
| LODs | Bakes to a static mesh whose LOD count has to be 1. One level of detail. | Bakes every LOD on the mesh in the same pass. |
| Conversion workflow | A data asset plus an Editor Utility Widget, several steps, not built for artists. | Right-click the skeletal mesh. One action. |
| Material setup | Manual. A chain of material instances, material layers and textures you wire up per asset. | Generated automatically, with a built-in fix for the common failure cases. |
| Placing a crowd | None. You place instances yourself or write your own tooling. | Crowd Editor mode with paint, grid and single placement, plus transform and erase. |
| Runtime animation control | Drive the material parameters yourself. | Blueprint API, animation lists with events, per-instance custom data. |
| Bake modes | Bone and vertex. | Bone and vertex. |
| Engine status | Experimental. Shipped in the Experimental folder as recently as 5.4. | A maintained commercial plugin for UE 5.5+. |
| Support | Community forums. | Discord, answered by the two developers who wrote it. |
AnimToTexture details reflect the plugin as shipped with Unreal Engine, where it remains in the Experimental folder. Epic may change it at any time.
Where teams outgrow AnimToTexture
These come up as soon as you go past a single test bake.
1. The single LOD ceiling
AnimToTexture bakes to a static mesh whose Number of LODs is set to 1. A crowd is mostly distance: the characters at the back of a stadium are a few pixels tall and they are still rendering every vertex of a full-detail mesh. Distance LODs are the biggest lever you have on crowd performance, and you only get them out of AnimToTexture by baking and wiring each level yourself. Vertex Animation Studio bakes every LOD on the mesh in the same pass.
2. Nothing to place a crowd with
AnimToTexture gives you a baked asset and stops. Getting ten thousand of them into a level is your problem, so it becomes a construction script, a spawner, or a very long afternoon. Vertex Animation Studio ships an editor mode: paint them in with a brush, lay them out on a grid, drop them one at a time, then transform and erase like any other editor tool. Crowd brushes save mixed configurations so you can reuse a composition across levels.
3. Setup you repeat every time
The AnimToTexture path runs through a data asset and an Editor Utility Widget, then a chain of material instances, material layers and textures you connect by hand. It is easy to modify the plugin's own files by accident while generating new ones, and developers have reported the widget not keeping pace with newer editor versions and a missing Param names node erroring from UE 5.2 onward. Vertex Animation Studio is a right-click on the skeletal mesh, with the materials generated and a built-in fix for the usual failure cases.
- 200 skeletal meshes
- 15 FPS
- 10,000 vertex animated
- 60 FPS
What people who bought it say
I originally bought this to use it in UEFN, but there were a few compatibility issues with the workflow. I reached out to the devs and they were super helpful, they even added a new export feature specifically for it. The plugin itself is amazing, it sped up my workflow so much. What used to take me around 20 mins per VAT asset (not including preparation) to the whole batch being done in a few minutes.
the cleanest, quickest and easiest vat solution i've seen, also has incredible support for issues from the developers.
Devs are very responsive on discord, documentation is extensive and well organized, and the plugin does everything it states it can. Highly recommend.
Platforms and engine versions
Vertex Animation Studio targets Unreal Engine 5.5 and later, and builds for Windows, Android, iOS, VR, Xbox and PlayStation. It is compatible with Nanite, Lumen, TSR and World Partition.
Console platforms are supported build targets. If you are heading for a console release, ask us in Discord about your setup before you buy.
Common questions
What is AnimToTexture? +
AnimToTexture is a free plugin made by Epic that bakes skeletal mesh animation into a Vertex Animation Texture so a static mesh can play it back on the GPU. It arrived with the City Sample project and has been part of the engine since UE 5.1. It still ships in the Experimental folder. It does the core bake, and for a small one-off crowd it is a perfectly reasonable choice.
Why pay for Vertex Animation Studio when AnimToTexture is free? +
Because the bake is the easy part. AnimToTexture bakes to a static mesh whose LOD count has to be 1, so your crowd renders at full detail no matter how far away it is, and distance is exactly where crowd performance is won. It also has no placement tooling, no Blueprint animation API, and a manual material setup you repeat per asset. Vertex Animation Studio bakes every LOD, generates the materials, and gives you a Crowd Editor to paint thousands of instances into the level. If you need one character baked once, use the free tool. If you are building a crowd, the difference is most of the work.
Does AnimToTexture support LODs? +
Not in the way a crowd needs. The plugin targets a static mesh whose Number of LODs is set to 1, so you get a single level of detail out of the bake. For a crowd that stretches into the distance, that means every background character is still paying full vertex cost. Getting multiple LODs out of AnimToTexture means baking and wiring each one up yourself.
Is AnimToTexture still maintained? +
It ships with the engine and still sits in the Experimental folder. Developers have reported the Editor Utility Widget not keeping pace with newer editor versions, and a missing Param names node producing an error from UE 5.2 onward. It is not abandoned, but it is not a supported production tool either, and there is nobody to ask when it breaks.
Can I try Vertex Animation Studio before buying? +
Yes. The free demo is a packaged Unreal project with the stadium scene in it. Run it and read the framerate on your own hardware. There is no signup and nothing to install.
Which platforms does Vertex Animation Studio build for? +
The plugin builds for Windows, Android, iOS, VR, Xbox and PlayStation on UE 5.5 and later. Console builds are supported build targets rather than a shipped-title claim, so if you are planning a console release, come and ask us in Discord about your specific setup before you commit.
Check it against your own scene
The demo is the stadium scene in a packaged build. No signup, nothing to install.
Still deciding whether to bake at all? Read vertex animation vs skeletal animation, or go straight to the documentation.
Stop buying multiple VAT plugins hoping one will work.
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