LOD for Animator - Optimize your Animators

Stop Animators from Killing Your Frame Rate!

Try the DEMO and see the difference: demo

Have questions? feel free to join our discord: discord

The Animator LOD System is a cutting-edge solution designed to solve one of the biggest performance bottlenecks in Unity: CPU cost from the Mecanim Animation System.

Unlike standard LOD systems that only reduce mesh complexity, our tool intelligently controls the Animator update frequency and component activity based on distance and camera visibility.

By utilizing the Unity Job System and Burst Compilation, all distance and frustum checks are offloaded to multiple CPU cores, offering massive performance gains over traditional single-threaded LOD approaches. This is a must-have for any game featuring large crowds, vast worlds, or numerous animated objects.

Suitable for Any Project:

The system is highly customizable and suitable for virtually any genre where you need to manage many animated entities:

• MMOs & RTS: Handle way more on-screen animators without a frame drop.
• Open-World & Survival: Ensure smooth performance while characters are moving in the distance.
• Mobile Games: Critically reduce CPU overhead for better battery life and frame stability.

Is the content customizable?

Absolutely! The core of the system is the AnimatorLODSettings scriptable object, which gives you complete control:

• Define custom distance tiers and set the exact frame update rate (e.g., update every 2, 4, or 8 frames) for each LOD level.
• Tweak the Cull Distance and Culled Update Rate for objects outside the camera frustum or too far away.
• Optionally disable the SkinnedMeshRenderer when objects are culled to save on draw calls.