Beginner: Issues rendering imported character assets

Unity Engine
1

As a simple example I’m modifying the HelloCube_06_SpawnFromEntity.

I can replace the spinning cube with a “create new cube”, add nothing to that new cube and it renders correctly.

I am having issues trying to import a free character asset to use that as the prefab.

I’ve tested 2 imported free assets:

VADIM ZIAMBETOV - Character Reptile
This assets appears to only have 1 nested Skinned Mesh Renderer. Nothing appears in the scene, but entities are created with these properties:

SILVANO JUNIOR - Creature: Cave Troll
This one has a couple of renderers that I can tell, and this is a combination of character (Troll) and weapon (club). The troll does not appear, but the club does.
And it looks like 2 different types of entities are being created (I change nothing in the sample code):

I’m trying to understand how to render imported characters and know what I’m doing. At this point I don’t understand why a simple cube shows up, but more complex character prefabs don’t.

I have a hard time reviewing sample projects because they are usually heavily polluted with out of date code and design. Can someone perhaps point me to some more relevant and/or focused examples that deal with this type of rendering through ECS?

Cheers

2

perhaps this asset is not supported by ECS. Try to add the script Convert to Entity and set Convert and Inject Game Object.

3

Convert To Entity doesn’t seem to be needed.

From what I can tell, the HybridRenderer handles rendering automatically for game objects that have both a mesh filter and mesh renderer component. It will also add LocalToWorld automatically if missing which is why I see those in the Entity debugger.

As an example, I can replace the prefab with the boids fish prefab (after removing the convert and boids script components) and they render just fine (and are animated).

So it seems either I need to find animated character assets that have both the mesh filter and renderer, or what? Manually customize the Hybrid renderer to work with skinned mesh renderers? How are other people getting their animated characters to render when spawning via ECS?

4

The free asset Top Down Robot by HELSSSOO works as it is simple, and has both the mesh filter and mesh renderer.
Good enough for me as a placeholder for now.