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Mesh Baker is a Unity asset that atlases textures and combines meshes, sold at the AssetStore by Ian Deane.
When submitting Vket exhibitions on Unity, the exhibitor must be aware of reducing SetPassCalls and Batches for optimized performance. The Mesh Baker is a useful tool to optimize performance on Unity.
In this article, we will go over how you can use Mesh Baker to reduce rendering costs. Information is based on Unity 2022.3.22f1 (as of October 2024).
A free version with limitations and a complete version without limitations are available.
Although it can convert Skinned Mesh Renderer to Mesh Renderer, it won't convert Bone Transform and BlendShape values.
You can reset BlendShape values again, but you can't recreate poses since Bone would be deleted.
Note: For baking Skinned Mesh Renderers, please also use the SkinnedMeshBaker.
Of the limitations of the Free version, these points are important.
Mesh Baker merging procedure is mainly divided into two parts.
It's possible to perform A→B, or even just B.
This creates the objects that perform the atlasing and the objects for the Mesh merging.
Drag and Drop into the red-marked area. Added objects can be viewed from Objects To Be Combined. You can also select Open Tools For Adding Objects to add object.
This opens a dialogue for saving the .asset file. Set the file name for the Baked result to be saved under.
The Baked result will be saved inside the same folder, so it is recommended to make a temporary folder for storing the results.
Check Multiple Combined Materials and click Build Source To Combined Mapping From Objects To Be Combined to select the Materials to be merged.
"Combined Material(the result from merging)" and "Source Materials(the materials that get merged)" will be listed up for each of the submesh.
You can change what Materials gets merged by editing "Source Materials". We advise merging the same types of Shaders.
For this example, we'll merge the same Shaders like below.
Click on Bake Materials Into Combined Material to begin atlasing and merging.
An error message "The free version of Mesh Baker only works with Diffuse and Bumped Diffuse Shaders." will appear on the console when using Shaders other than Diffuse, or Bumped Diffuse with the Free version.
At this point a copy of the texture and the Material should be stored in the specified folder.
The Object "MeshBaker" exists as a child of "TextureBaker." You will use MeshBaker for merging Meshes, but the export settings will have to be done on MeshBakerGrouper inside TextureBaker.
As appearing below, it will carry out the method B-4 on the object set in the Use Shared Settings. By clearing the Use Shared Settings you can make individual settings for the disabled area.
If you only want to do Mesh merging, start from step B-1.
If you've used the TextureBaker in the previous step, skip to B-3.
If you don't want the texture atlased, and only want to merge the Mesh, Create the MeshBaker from GameObject
Drag & Drop into the red marked area. Added objects could be checked from Custom List Of Objects To Be Combined.
You can only choose Output Into Scene Object for Free version. If using the paid version, we recommend using the Bake Into Prefab to save the mesh info as proper file data.
If using Output Into Scene Object, you can specify where the combined mesh would go with the Combined Mesh Object.
Having nothing specified will create a new Object in Hierarchy so it's fine to leave it as it is.
If you are using Bake Into Prefab, set the Prefab file from the Project window into Combined Mesh Prefab.
An .asset file containing the mesh data will also be generated in that folder.
You can select the output to be either "Mesh Renderer" or "Skinned Mesh Renderer" in Renderer. The bones tied to "Skinned Mesh Renderer" will stay the same as the pre-merged Mesh's Armature.
Shapekeys could be copied by enabling Include Blend Shapes and setting output to Skinned Mesh Renderer. However, the key's names will be changed to prevent overlaps, so you would have to reconfigure Animations.
Lightmapping UVs needs to be configured when merging Light Bake-targeted(Lightmap Static) Meshes.
Hit Bake to output the merged Mesh to the specified target file location using the specified settings. You can still use the original Mesh if you decide you want to change some settings and re-merge.
The original Texture, Material, and Meshes will stay as it is, so make sure not to keep them in the submission folder.
Also, make sure to check the asset folder if the original mesh and textures are not remaining.