Unity Game Optimization - Third Edition

Enabling/disabling GPU skinning

The first tip involves a setting that eases the burden on the CPU or GPU frontend at the expense of the other, that is, GPU Skinning. Skinning is the process where mesh vertices are transformed based on the current location of their animated bones. The animation system, working on the CPU, transforms the object's bones that are used to determine its current pose, but the next important step in the animation process is wrapping the mesh vertices around those bones to place the mesh in the final pose. This is achieved by iterating over each vertex and performing a weighted average against the bones connected to those vertices.

This vertex processing task can either take place on the CPU or within the frontend ...