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Unity Engine


VertexAttributeDescriptor

Information about a single VertexAttribute of a Mesh vertex.
Read time 3 minutesLast updated 5 days ago

Definition

public struct VertexAttributeDescriptor : IEquatable<VertexAttributeDescriptor>

Remarks

Mesh vertex data comprised of different Vertex Attributes. For example, a vertex can include a Position, Normal, TexCoord0, and Color. Meshes usually use a known format for data layout, for example, a position is most often a 3-component float vector (Vector3), but you can also specify non-standard data formats and their layout for a Mesh.
You can use
VertexAttributeDescriptor
to specify custom mesh data layout in Mesh.SetVertexBufferParams.
Vertex data is laid out in separate "streams" (each stream goes into a separate vertex buffer in the underlying graphics API). Unity supports up to four vertex streams, but you usually use only one stream. Separate streams are most useful when some vertex attributes don't need to be processed, or you need to give the vertex attributes a specific data layout.
If you include
BlendWeight
or
BlendIndices
attributes in your vertex data, the following applies:
  • If you use a layout other than Unity's default stream layout, Unity might reorder your vertex attributes or incorrectly render your vertices in a SkinnedMeshRenderer.
  • Unity puts position, normal, and tangent into the same vertex stream, and uses
    float32
    format regardless of the format you specify.
  1. In the first stream, add VertexAttribute.Position, VertexAttribute.Normal and VertexAttribute.Tangent.
  2. In the second stream, add VertexAttribute.Color, and VertexAttribute.TexCoord0 to VertexAttribute.TexCoord7.
  3. In the third stream, add VertexAttribute.BlendWeight and VertexAttribute.BlendIndices.
All the attributes in the second stream are optional. If you don't include any
Color
or
TexCoord
attributes, add
BlendWeight
and
BlendIndices
to the second stream instead.
Not all VertexAttributeDescriptor.format and VertexAttributeDescriptor.dimension combinations are valid. Specifically, the data size of a vertex attribute must be a multiple of 4 bytes. For example, a VertexAttributeFormat.Float16 format with dimension
3
is not valid. Additional Resources: SystemInfo.SupportsVertexAttributeFormat.
var mesh = new Mesh();// specify vertex layout with:// - floating point positions,// - half-precision (FP16) normals with two components,// - low precision (UNorm8) tangentsvar layout = new[]{ new VertexAttributeDescriptor(VertexAttribute.Position, VertexAttributeFormat.Float32, 3), new VertexAttributeDescriptor(VertexAttribute.Normal, VertexAttributeFormat.Float16, 2), new VertexAttributeDescriptor(VertexAttribute.Tangent, VertexAttributeFormat.UNorm8, 4),};var vertexCount = 10;mesh.SetVertexBufferParams(vertexCount, layout);
A C# struct (for use with Mesh.SetVertexBufferData) matching this vertex layout could look like this:
[System.Runtime.InteropServices.StructLayout(System.Runtime.InteropServices.LayoutKind.Sequential)]struct ExampleVertex{ public Vector3 pos; public ushort normalX, normalY; public Color32 tangent;}

Constructors

Properties

Property

Description

attributeThe vertex attribute.
dimensionDimensionality of the vertex attribute.
formatFormat of the vertex attribute.
streamWhich vertex buffer stream the attribute should be in.