2D Toolkit Forum

2D Toolkit => Support => Topic started by: xByteCode on March 17, 2013, 04:37:39 pm

Title: What is an atlas?
Post by: xByteCode on March 17, 2013, 04:37:39 pm

This may be a simple question, but since I started using tk2d I have have seen atlas used many times, especially in a sprite collection. So what exactly is meant by a atlas? I know the word itself is defined as a collection of maps or charts, but can also mean the size of a drawing or piece of paper. Is that what is meant by sprite atlas, meaning the size of the sprite?

Thanks for any help and yes I am fairly new to both Unity and tk2d  :)

Title: Re: What is an atlas?
Post by: dotty on March 17, 2013, 05:30:32 pm

All your seperate sprite textures are put onto a single texture (so Unity only needs to load 1 image, instead of many images). That texture is an atlas.

Title: Re: What is an atlas?
Post by: xByteCode on March 17, 2013, 06:11:34 pm

Ah I see. So basically an atlas or texture atlas is like an sprite sheet, in a sense they both hold multiple images in a single image. In this case a texture is holding multiple images or sprites.

Thanks for the help dotty :)