Animecs
High-performance GPU animation system for DOTS. Bake Mecanim to ECS. Animate thousands of characters with state machines and blend trees.
by Blackbyte Games
Price History +
Animecs converts your existing Animator Controllers to DOTS-compatible animation systems with GPU compute skinning. Keep your Mecanim workflow, get DOTS performance.
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The Problem
Unity DOTS lacks native animation support. Building state machines, blend trees, and LOD systems from scratch takes weeks. Bridging GameObject animators with entities defeats the purpose of DOTS.
The Solution
Animecs reads your Animator Controller and bakes everything to pure ECS:
- States and transitions become blob assets
- Bone matrices pre-sampled for GPU skinning
- Parameters drive runtime transitions
- LOD automatically reduces update frequency
- Blend shapes supported (baked or runtime)
Right-click your prefab, bake, done. Your animation logic converts in seconds.
Performance by Default
- GPU Skinning - Compute shader deformation, tens of thousands of characters per frame
- Shared Bone Data - Identical skeletons reference the same blob assets
- Automatic LOD - Distance-based updates (High/Medium/Low/Off) with temporal distribution
- Burst Compiled - All systems optimized with SIMD
- Zero Allocations - Blob assets eliminate runtime garbage collection
Familiar Workflow
If you know Mecanim, you know Animecs:
- Same states, same transitions, same blend trees
- Standard Animator Controller authoring
- Animation events with frame-accurate detection
- Float, int, bool, trigger parameters
- 1D and 2D blend trees (directional, cartesian, direct)
No custom state machine code. No manual bone matrix sampling. No performance guesswork.
What You Get -
State Machines - Parameter-driven transitions with exit time, duration, blend curves
Blend Trees - 1D, 2D Simple Directional, 2D Freeform Directional, 2D Freeform Cartesian, Direct blending
LOD System - Configurable distance thresholds and update frequencies. Entities update at 1/8th rate when distant.
Blend Shapes - Pre-baked from animations or runtime override for procedural control
Animation Events - Fire code at specific frames. Perfect for footsteps, weapon hits, effects.
Runtime Control - Play states, set parameters, query animation data. Full Burst-compatible API.
Debug Visualization - Optional overlay showing state, time, LOD level, blend progress
Use Cases
- Large crowds and armies
- Open-world NPCs
- RTS unit animations
- Battle royale character counts
- Any scenario requiring 100+, 1000+, 10,000+ animated characters
Animecs focuses on what DOTS does best: performance at scale. If you need to animate crowds without writing custom state machines, Animecs solves that problem.