Can I instantiate Texture2D objects without using VRAM?

Unity Engine
1

I was wondering if anyone might be able to help me with this.

I am trying to load a bunch of images using WWW.LoadImageIntoTexture, but I don’t actually need to use them as textures in the game. They are used to generate splatmaps and place trees/details on terrain. I need the pixel-data to run the mapping algorithms, but I don’t need the images stored in VRAM because they’re never rendered as actual textures in the scene.

Do I have to roll-my-own Image class to do this or will Texture2D suffice? The images are fairly large and I really don’t want them clogging up the VRAM.

2

Oh and a follow up question:

In a case where I actually do want to use a WWW.LoadImageIntoTexture to get a real texture, is there anyway to place this texture with my other Resources so I can call Resources.load and find it that way? Some of my terrains will share textures so I don’t want to be re-downloading/compressing them unnecessarily.