When you load an asset then after you destroy it, you can’t load it anymore.
It was the only successfully releasing memory for texture to me.
In my first test with Android;
I have a character prefab it has meshes and material, material has big texture let say it to “TestTexture”.
I created scene to load this prefab and destroyed its instance then switched to empty scene.
unity memory profiler shows me there is no TestTexture anymore!
But android studio shows me not all memory freed after switched to empty scene.
There is a reserved memory increased after switched to empty scene.
Second test with Android;
Load Prefab and keep instance of it some time later find all materials of the instance and Destroy(material.texture), destroy prefab instance also then switched to empty scene.
it will free memory for big texture but when you load prefab again material texture is null.
Third test with Android;
Load Prefab and keep instance, load Texture asset and keep instance also then find prefab materials sign texture for them.
some time later destroy texture asset it will free up memory after switching to empty scene.
When you try to load this texture again you can’t reach it anymore it is null.
Second and Third tests shows me in android studio it freed memory for this texture but you cant access it anymore.
Conclusion, i need to free up this reserved memory but i wanna reuse this asset with Resources.Load again.
So anyone have an idea?
You’re probably trying to Destroy() the original prefab.
You cannot do this.
You may only Destroy() things you Instantiated.
Instantiate() returns a reference to what it made from the original prefab.
When you feel destructive, destroy the reference, not the original prefab.
If that isn’t it, then welcome to debugging. Here’s how to get started;
You must find a way to get the information you need in order to reason about what the problem is.
Once you understand what the problem is, you may begin to reason about a solution to the problem.
What is often happening in these cases is one of the following:
the code you think is executing is not actually executing at all
the code is executing far EARLIER or LATER than you think
the code is executing far LESS OFTEN than you think
the code is executing far MORE OFTEN than you think
the code is executing on another GameObject than you think it is
you’re getting an error or warning and you haven’t noticed it in the console window
To help gain more insight into your problem, I recommend liberally sprinkling Debug.Log() statements through your code to display information in realtime.
Doing this should help you answer these types of questions:
is this code even running? which parts are running? how often does it run? what order does it run in?
what are the values of the variables involved? Are they initialized? Are the values reasonable?
are you meeting ALL the requirements to receive callbacks such as triggers / colliders (review the documentation)
Knowing this information will help you reason about the behavior you are seeing.
You can also supply a second argument to Debug.Log() and when you click the message, it will highlight the object in scene, such as Debug.Log("Problem!",this);
If your problem would benefit from in-scene or in-game visualization, Debug.DrawRay() or Debug.DrawLine() can help you visualize things like rays (used in raycasting) or distances.
You can also call Debug.Break() to pause the Editor when certain interesting pieces of code run, and then study the scene manually, looking for all the parts, where they are, what scripts are on them, etc.
You can also call GameObject.CreatePrimitive() to emplace debug-marker-ish objects in the scene at runtime.
You could also just display various important quantities in UI Text elements to watch them change as you play the game.
If you are working in VR, it might be useful to make your on onscreen log output, or integrate one from the asset store, so you can see what is happening as you operate your software.
Another useful approach is to temporarily strip out everything besides what is necessary to prove your issue. This can simplify and isolate compounding effects of other items in your scene or prefab.
Here’s an example of putting in a laser-focused Debug.Log() and how that can save you a TON of time wallowing around speculating what might be going wrong:
When in doubt, print it out!™
Note: the print() function is an alias for Debug.Log() provided by the MonoBehaviour class.
It could be a garbage collection issue. Ie the collector hasn’t run and cleared that memory allocation yet.
Is it not possible to rather pool the object or alter it to different object property rather than destroy it? Ie. Spawn a sprite then pool it and change it and return it when needed in the scene?