The Latios Framework is a powerful suite of high-performance low-level APIs and feature-sets for Unity’s ECS which aims to give you back control over your gameplay. If you like the general paradigms, syntax, and workflows of Unity’s ECS, but find Unity’s offerings to be incomplete or frustratingly full of quirky unintuitive details, then this framework may be exactly what you need to achieve your vision.
The Latios Framework does not replace Unity’s ECS, but rather complements it with additional APIs and tools. In some cases, the Latios Framework may override Unity ECS’s underlying mechanisms to provide more features or improve performance. Desktop platforms are supported out-of-the-box. Other platforms may require additional effort (i.e. compiling native plugins) to achieve functionality and performance benefits.
Originally, this framework was for my own personal hobbyist game development, and in a sense, still is. However, after several years of development, it has proven a valuable resource to the Unity ECS community. It is provided here free to use for personal or commercial usage and modification. All modules are licensed under the Unity Companion License. The modules may contain code borrowed from official Unity packages and therefore may be seen as derivative works. Despite this, the Latios Framework contains many adaptations of top-class solutions in the industry (see Third Party Notices) as well as original inventions geared towards Unity’s ECS.
The Latios Framework is best-known in the community for Kinemation, a module which provides extremely high-performance CPU animation and GPU skinned mesh rendering features.
This version targets Entities 1.0.10. If you are still using Entities 0.51.1, please use the framework version 0.5.8 instead.
Note: This release is not compatible with Unity Transforms. Compatibility may be added in the future via a community effort.
[0.6.x] users, please read the Upgrade Guide!
If you have any experience with DOTS, please take this survey!
The Latios Framework contains multiple modules, each of which contain public API for your own use.
Core is an essentials kit for handling common programming concerns in Unity’s ECS. It contains many features you might have heard of such as Rng, Blackboard Entities, Collection Components, Instantiate Command Buffers, Smart Blobbers, and Baking Bootstraps. But there are many more features around. If there is a common “hard” problem in ECS, there’s a good chance Core has a tool to address it.
QVVS Transforms provide custom transforms systems based on the concept of QVVS transforms, which are vector-based transforms that can represent non-uniform scale without ever creating shear. There are three modes: Cached QVVS, Uncached QVVS, and Unity Compatibility. Currently only Cached QVVS is implemented.
Along with QVVS representations, this module contains replacements for baking and systems that offer more performance and determinism than what is shipped with Unity.
Psyshock Physics is a physics and spatial query module focused on user control. While most physics engines provide out-of-the-box simulation, Psyshock instead provides direct access to the underlying algorithms so that you can craft the perfect physics simulation for your game and not waste any computation on things you don’t need. Psyshock’s Collision Layers can be built directly from Entity Queries, removing all the archetype guesswork out of collisions and triggers.
Myri Audio is an out-of-the-box pure ECS audio solution. It features 3D spatialization of both looping and non-looping audio sources, multiple listeners, directional and non-directional sources, and a voice combining feature to support massive amounts of sources at once. Playing audio is as simple as instantiating prefabs.
Kinemation Animation and Renderering provides authored animation, simulated animation, and everything in between. It includes an overhauled Entities Graphics for significantly improved performance of both skinned and non-skinned entities, and also provides extra features such as enabled bit toggled rendering and mesh modifications in Burst jobs.
On the animation side, Kinemation supports bone entity and optimized bone buffer configurations. It includes utilities for inertial blending. And for animation clips it leverages ACL, a powerful high quality animation compression solution used in AAA titles such as Rise of the Tomb Raider and Valorant.
- Mach-Axle AI – An infinite axis utility evaluator designed for high throughput
- Unika – A high-performance scripting solution including support for interfaces and coroutines using source generators
- Life FX – VFX simulations which add immersion to stylized worlds
Typically, “frameworks” fall into one of two categories. Either, they are someone’s collection of convenience classes and extension methods, or they define a specific architecture and workflow for describing gameplay code.
While the Latios Framework has some of those things, its primary concerns are at the engine level. Many of its tools and solutions are inspired by GDC presentations, technical blogs, and research papers. A key focus of the framework is to make these advanced technologies usable within a DOTS-based production environment. But another common theme is fixing or providing alternatives for fundamental design issues in the official ECS packages. For technical reasons, it is a “framework”, but the individual APIs act more like a toolkit and stay out of the way. A developer using it should always feel in control. If not, there’s likely an issue worth bringing to attention.
0.5 marked the end of Phase II, where focus was placed on enabling technologies in Unity ECS such as audio and animation. Current Phase III development focuses on modernizing the technology for Entities 1.0.
Long term, the Latios Framework’s mission is to dramatically reduce the development effort required to make highly artistic 3D games and short films.
There are three methods to install the framework package (contains all publicly released modules).
- Clone or submodule this repository into your project’s Packages folder (recommended for contributors or those wanting faster bugfixes and updates)
- Add package via Package Manager -> Add package from git URL
- Add via OpenUPM
After installing the framework package, follow the instructions in the first section here. You may also want to look through the compatibility guide.
Getting Started pages and documentation are provided with each module.
- DMotion – Open source animation state machine powered by Kinemation
TL;DR – I try to take issues and feedback as seriously as if this were a commercial project (or for the cynical, to shame commercial projects). Do not hesitate to reach out to me!
This is a hobby project and not my full-time job, so I cut corners and don’t spend a lot of time testing things. Sometimes I write code while an idea is in my head and just leave it there. Bugs will sneak in.
However, bugs are infuriating!
If you see a confusing error, send me a description of what you were doing and a stack trace with line numbers and the version you are using. You can use the GitHub issues, GitHub discussions, Discord, the DOTS forums, Unity PMs, or emails. Usually, I will find a bug fix locally, and provide instructions on how to apply the fix yourself. Then I will roll out the bug fix in my next release.
For strange behavior that doesn’t trigger errors, a repro is the only way to guarantee the issue gets diagnosed, but a good description can go a long ways too.
For performance issues, if you can’t send me a repro, send me a profile capture. It doesn’t matter if the issue makes your game unplayable or if you just want one task to be a couple hundred microseconds faster. I’m interested!
Please send feature requests, even if it is already listed on one of the near-term roadmaps. It helps me prioritize. Requests for small utility functions or other simple concerns can usually be squeezed in patch releases. I always reserve full discretion. Try to propose your use case, and focus less on a proposed solution.
If you see gaps in the documentation, or are struggling to understand features, let me know. If you would like more demos and samples, also let me know what you would like an example of. I won’t build your game idea for you, but simple things I can try and squeeze in.
I develop this framework separately from this repository scattered across various projects. I will provide the current snapshot from any of those projects upon request. I promise the code may be terrible. This may be useful to you if you desire to contribute in an area I am actively developing. See Contributing for more information.
If you are developing your own packages on top of this framework, commercial or open source, feel free to reach out to me for suggestions, guidance, or to establish your stake in the areas that concern you. It is important to me that such dependent technologies are successful. For open source projects, I may even send a pull request.
I do not promise backwards compatibility between feature releases (0.X). I will have upgrade guides detailing all the breakages and what to change. But it will be a manual process.
Patch releases (0.7.X) will always preserve backwards compatibility back to the last feature release.
While I will provide tips and suggestions if you use older releases, I will not publish patch releases for older versions.
If you would like to be added to this list, see Contributing for how to get started.
- Dechichi01 – various fixes and improvements for Core, Psyshock, and Kinemation
- Anthiese – Mac OS support
- canmom – Kinemation baking and build fixes
If you choose to modify any of the contents here licensed under the Unity Companion License, my understanding is that any modifications, including new inventions inserted, will belong to Unity as per the terms described by the license.
Personally, I do not have an issue with this license as it permits me to always be able to use my inventions in Unity projects and I have no issue if Unity wants to adopt anything here.