This tool is used to streamline use of Epics experimental AnimToTexture plugin. The utility widget provides a simple UI for the user to create a Static Mesh from the Skeletal Mesh used in the animations, create empty textures to bake the animation data into, create an empty data asset for the animation data, and populate the data asset with said data.
Skeletal meshes provide significant flexibility for complex rigged animations, but have a larger impact on the frame rate than static meshes because of all the bone weighting, post processing, animation updates, etc. There are optimization techniques available like LODs and animation sharing, but it can still be difficult or impossible to reach the desired performance level when animating a large amount of characters.
To overcome these performance issues, real-time developers often use a technique called vertex animation. This is where you extract out the data from a skeletal animation into texture files that can be easily read by a static mesh’s material to move individual vertices.
Unreal Engine 5 includes the experimental AnimToTexture plugin, which allows us to convert our Skeletal Animations into Vertex animations.