Asset Import Settings

[appymedia]

Hi All,

I've been reading through the docs for 2D Toolkit and have been making up sprite collections, creating prefabs and instantiating from the editor / code etc and all's working great.  I just wanted to check something.

To create a sprite collection I need an already imported asset into Unity i.e. the 'Sprite'.  Whats the recommended settings or guidance here for importing into Unity?  I know that when the sprite collection is 'commited' 2D Toolkit also performs some processing (with Unity) to create the atlas so does that mean the asset is processed twice?

For instance if I have a simple circle as a GIF but I'm aiming to use 'point' filtering do I initially import the GIF as a 'Sprite' texture type (I'm using Unity 4.3.4) and then when setting up the sprite collection use 'point' sampling again in the settings there?

Sorry if this sounds a little stupid, pretty new to Unity and whilst the asset management seems excellent its a little confusing to begin with

Thanks

Pete

[unikronsoftware]

Hi, the texture/sprite asset is merged into a tk2d atlas when you commit the collection. That means that most of the time it really doesn't matter what the source format is. You'd need to set up filtering options in the sprite collection and let tk2d handle that for tk2d sprites

[appymedia]

Many thanks again

Just for my understanding does that mean that Unity stores the 'raw' GIF (in this instance) when you import it and its that data that is used when setting up the sprite collection ?  I guess I'm trying to properly understand what Unity does when you import an asset into it.  In my tiny brain it would make snese for Unity to hold the original and then create the usable asset based on the import settings when needed i.e. switching platform / compiling etc which would allow for the per platform overides I see as well.  Am I right or totally wrong?

Sorry for the questions, I guess this is more general Unity one but ties in with 2D Toolkit... well.... a bit lol

[appymedia]

I think I found the info looking at the Unity docs.  Unity stores meta data regarding the original asset which I assume is the actual import settings but the raw asset is still there so I'm assuming 2D Toolkit just goes back to the raw asset and processes it as per your Sprite Collection settings which are in effect the Atlas settings.

I'm still very new to Unity so only just realised I can drop an asset directly into Unity from the file system and then sprinkle on the import settings and then continue to update it externally as long as I don't move it around the file structure at that point, handy.

Let me know if I'm way off here please, never harmful having a good idea of whats going on

[unikronsoftware]

Yeah that pretty much sums it up. Think of the import settings as a transformation of the texture representation inside Unity. It doesn't modify your source files, etc. tk2d modifies the import settings to meet its requirements.