The character shadow lane CPU-skinned every admitted unit into one merged
Mesh asset and re-uploaded it each rebuild — the documented expensive half
of the lane's ~3 ms, and the part that scales with players. Replace it with
one GPU-skinned caster per admitted creature part: the part's own skinned
mesh and MeshTag, drawn through a new SkinnedShadowCasterMaterial whose
prepass vertex skins from the shared rig palette (the same rows wow_model
reads). Pose changes are free; only membership is reconciled per frame.
Palette region offsets are pushed as shader defs, so the caster shader reads
the shared light buffer's tail as a flat array and needs no copy of the
WowLight layout.
chairmanpow
4c15ab4bdd