OpenVAT v1.0.4

OpenVAT is a Blender-native toolkit for baking Vertex Animation Textures (VATs), enabling real-time playback of complex animated deformations on the GPU through vertex shaders. The addon captures mesh deformation from Blender’s evaluated dependency graph, supporting animation from geometry nodes, modifiers, shapekeys, simulations, and third-party plugins—essentially any vertex-level animation that deforms visibly in Blender can be recorded and exported.

VATs encode per-vertex deformation data over time into textures, allowing engines to playback complex animation with minimal runtime overhead. This approach is particularly useful for efficient crowd animation, baking simulations like cloth and soft body dynamics into real-time assets, instanced animation across hundreds of objects, morphing and layered deformation, and shader-driven interactivity based on distance fields, masks, or gameplay data. The format provides flexibility beyond simple cached playback, enabling per-instance randomization, time offsets, and reactive effects driven entirely on the GPU.

OpenVAT requires stable mesh topology across all frames and works exclusively with polygonal meshes. The addon is available for Blender 4.2 and later through the Blender Extensions Platform or directly within Blender’s extension browser. It is licensed under GPL-3.0 for open-source projects, with commercial licensing available for proprietary applications. Export output itself carries no license restrictions and may be used commercially.