Skinned Mesh Renderer component

The Skinned MeshThe main graphics primitive of Unity. Meshes make up a large part of your 3D worlds. Unity supports triangulated or Quadrangulated polygon meshes. Nurbs, Nurms, Subdiv surfaces must be converted to polygons. More info
See in Glossary Renderer component renders a deformable mesh. Deformable meshes include skinned meshes (meshes that have bones and bind poses), meshes that have blend shapes, and meshes that run cloth simulation.

To render a regular mesh, use a Mesh RendererA mesh component that takes the geometry from the Mesh Filter and renders it at the position defined by the object’s Transform component. More info
See in Glossary and a Mesh FilterA mesh component that takes a mesh from your assets and passes it to the Mesh Renderer for rendering on the screen. More info
See in Glossary instead.

When you add a deformable mesh or a model with a deformable mesh to a sceneA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info
See in Glossary, Unity adds a Skinned Mesh Renderer component to the resulting GameObjectThe fundamental object in Unity scenes, which can represent characters, props, scenery, cameras, waypoints, and more. A GameObject’s functionality is defined by the Components attached to it. More info
See in Glossary.

In C# code, the SkinnedMeshRenderer class represents a Skinned Mesh Renderer component. The SkinnedMeshRenderer class inherits much of its functionality from the Renderer class. As such, this component has a lot in common with other components that inherit from Renderer, such as Line RendererA component that takes an array of two or more points in 3D space and draws a straight line between each one. You can use a single Line Renderer component to draw anything from a simple straight line to a complex spiral. More info
See in Glossary, and Trail RendererA visual effect that lets you to make trails behind GameObjects in the Scene as they move. More info
See in Glossary.

Troubleshooting Skinned Mesh Renderer visibility

Unity uses the mesh’s bounds to determine whether to render it. If the entire bounding volumeA closed shape representing the edges and faces of a collider or trigger.
See in Glossary is outside the view of any active CameraA component which creates an image of a particular viewpoint in your scene. The output is either drawn to the screen or captured as a texture. More info
See in Glossary, Unity does not render the mesh.

In the case of a Skinned Mesh Renderer, its mesh bounds change as it deforms. Unity accounts for all animations present at import time when it calculates the maximum bounding volume, and uses this value to determine visibility; however, the following situations that occur after import might push vertices or bones outside of the maximum known bounds:

• Additive animations
• Changing the positions of bones from a script at runtime
• Using vertex shadersA program that runs on the GPU. More info
  See in Glossary that change vertex positions
• Using ragdolls

If this happens, Unity might not correctly determine the visibility of the mesh, and might fail to show it when expected.

In these cases, you can try either of the following solutions to fix the problem:

• Modify the bounds to match the maximum potential bounding volume of your mesh. Use this option if possible, because it is better for performance.
• Enable Update When Offscreen, so that Unity continues to calculate the mesh bounds at all times, even when the mesh is not visible. Use this option if performance is not a major concern, or if you can’t predict the size of your bounding volume (for example, if you use ragdolls).

Skinned Mesh Renderer Inspector reference

• Properties
  
• MaterialsAn asset that defines how a surface should be rendered. More info
  See in Glossary
  
• Lighting
  
• Probes
  
• Additional Settings

Properties

Materials

The Materials section lists all the materials that this component uses.

Note: If there are more materials than there are sub-meshes, Unity renders the last sub-mesh with each of the remaining materials, one on top of the next. If the materials are not fully opaque, you can layer different materials and create interesting visual effects. However, fully opaque materials overwrite previous layers, so any additional opaque materials that Unity applies to the last sub-mesh negatively affect performance and produce no benefit.

Lighting

The Lighting section contains properties that relate to lighting.

Probes

The Probes section contains properties relating to Light Probe and Reflection ProbesA rendering component that captures a spherical view of its surroundings in all directions, rather like a camera. The captured image is then stored as a Cubemap that can be used by objects with reflective materials. More info
See in Glossary.

Additional Settings

The Additional Settings section contains additional properties.