This Unreal Engine 5 game renders HOW MANY characters in real time?

"Edvar Studio's Trakonius is still in development with a release date yet to be announced, but a developer known as Animatolog has been sharing progress on Reddit. In a recent post, they shared a behind-the-scenes look at a scene that features 18,000 characters rendered in real time using Vertex Animation Textures, a technique that stores mesh animation data in textures rather than the CPU."

"The developer says the static-lit scene used one stationary Directional Light, and the crowd was placed using the Foliage tool for optimisation. They don't cast any dynamic light in game's arenas, only using contact shadows and a pre-computed AO Mask. The result is just a 1-2 fps loss on a Nvidia RTX 2060 PC. Animatolog said there are three LODs for the audience with three Vertex Animation Textures."

Trakonius, a Roman gladiator-inspired action-roguelike, renders up to 18,000 audience characters in a static-lit arena using Vertex Animation Textures, which store mesh animation data in textures instead of the CPU. The scene uses a single stationary Directional Light, foliage-tool placement for optimization, contact shadows, and a precomputed ambient occlusion mask so the crowd does not cast dynamic light. The setup produces only a 1–2 fps loss on an Nvidia RTX 2060. The crowd employs three levels of detail with three Vertex Animation Textures. Uniform audience behavior remains noticeable because all characters use the same animations without varied groups or offset timings.

Read at Creative Bloq