It's a really interesting approach and the video explains it well. With nanite is becoming a thing for Skeletal meshes, it looses a bit of interest But your approach still save all the anim computations at runtime. Would have love to see your approach to create the texures from the animations. Great work !
Would it makes sense to use this method for a full playable character? Instead of using a skeletal mesh with animations using something akin to a sprite library with different vertex animations that are driven by blueprint? For most characters it wouldn't make sense but for something like Crash Bandicoot or say a blob of slime it would it be useful to convert a something like a softbody simulation or procedural displacement into a baked vertex animation for an otherwise static mesh?
The game Kingmakers( Timetravelling soldier with gun in medieavel times) uses a heavily customized version of VAT to generate entire massive armies of 1000+ npc that react to physics. They only have skeletal meshes on a few npcs near the player and switch between VATs and skeletal meshes depending on proximity.Check out the trailer and get your mind blown
