Visual Scripting Technical Overview

A scripting graph lifecycle is the product of two separations: asset and scene objects, gameobjects and entities.

Editor Asset	Scene Object	Runtime Asset	Runtime Object
VSGraphModel	ScriptingGraphAuthoring,ScriptingGraphAsset	ScriptingGraph,GraphDefinition	ScriptingGraphInstance
VariableDeclarationModel	InputBindingAuthoring	InputBinding	ValueInputs

Graphs

During translation, the VSGraphModel creates an embedded ScriptableObject, the ScriptingGraphAsset, containing a GraphDefinition. This asset is referenced on a GameObject by a ScriptingGraphAuthoring conversion component.

During conversion, the ScriptingGraphAuthoring adds two components to the entity: a ScriptingGraph shared component that references the definition asset and a ScriptingGraphInstance components holding instance specific values.

Inputs/outputs:

Each VariableDeclarationModel in the graph model is translated to an InputBinding in the graph definition - a BindingId ( the variable model guid) and a reserved data index.

The ScriptingGraphAuthoring has a list of InputBindingAuthoring mapping a BindingId to a value, which can be scene GameObjects.

During the conversion, a BlobAsset of type ValueInputs is created, and a reference to that blob asset is stored in the ScriptingGraphInstance component.

The ScriptingGraphRuntime fills the data buckets described in the bindings with the values in the blob asset Bound object