best way to draw a lof of plane with 2d sprite animation?

Unity Engine
1

Hello,
I am running into a performance issue. The thing is: i have about 60 planes moving through a 3d city. All random walking characters. (3d planes with 2d animated texture on it)

Now: this will give me about 60 drawcalls on top of the excisting calls. So performance is getting bad. What is the best way to draw a lot of random walking characters in a single draw calls. And the main character needs to interact with those characters.

I thought about vertex animation, but that sounds way more heavier then how I am doing this right now.

2

You could use a skinned mesh, where each bone controls one plane.

–Eric

3

Hi Eric!
thnx, that’s clever! I’ll give that a try. Would that be much the same as controlling the vertex direct through code? (e.g. mesh.vertices[0] = new vector(1,2,3);

Regards! Tom

4

Not really; each bone controls all of the vertices that are bound to it.

–Eric

5

and performance? bones animation vs vertices setting position through code.