Making Asset Store Packages?

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Hi! I hope this is in the right section of the forum, I did some browsing of the forums to make sure my question was in the right place, but if I’m off, I apologize. I’m still sort of learning how these forums are organized Also, it turns out I asked more questions than I thought I had, so summed up, my basic question is “What are the standards for a good 2D art asset package for unity?” just in case you’re not interested in reading all of this.

Anyways, I’m interested in learning how to make 2D art assets for unity, in hopes of making a 2D art package for sale on the asset store. I wanted to make sure I had a good idea of what direction to take in order to make sure I made a good, serviceable, reputable pack to sell, but while I was looking through the files of a few different asset packages, I ran into a bunch of file types I’m not familiar with. I’ll list them for reference:

I had never heard of a “prefab” and I couldn’t understand how shaders could be applied to sprites(I’m new to unity), so I spent some time reviewing the unity 2D game tutorial series that mentioned how some of these worked, and I was hoping I could cross reference what I learned in that tutorial series with the contents of these packages? I was hoping the unity community could help me confirm what I learned so that I might be able to make an asset package?

It looks like in the Manufactura K4 2D Art Pack, the “art” folder is loaded with background images which consist of a handful of .psd’s for the background, likely still in psd form and not png so that whoever buys the package might have an easier time building the background themselves to better fit their needs. Then there’s all the modular .png files which make up the bulk of the asset package, which I am of course familiar with. All of this I can wrap my head around easily.

Then there’s the collision folder, which is filled with copies of the same .png’s found in the art folder, which I guess have had 2D colliders (likely polygonal) applied to them? I don’t think anything else was applied to these aside from colliders, but that’s what I got. Either way, that’s also simple enough for me to understand. I gather these, combined with the .png files, account for at least 80% of what any art asset package should be.

There’s a folder for “scenes,” and there’s three of them, which I’m guessing are for the three different “styles” in the package; snowy forest, regular forest, and night forest. Sample/Example Scenes like this I gather are imperative for anyone planning on selling their package.

But all of my confusion I think comes from the “standard assets” folder. There’s an image effects folder and it’s full of .js files, which I have no idea how to use in my art, and come in “basic” and “pro only” varieties. Should I even worry about including these in an art asset package?

There’s also a folder full of tons of shaders, in folders of “bloom and flares,” “depth of field,” “contrast stretch,” etc. How do these work in unity? There’s also a textures package, which I’m guessing is just supposed to be superimposed over the entire screen at the behest of the game designer.

Finally, there’s a folder called “Unity 2D Project Assets,” which is what looks like just the character from the sample game used in the 2D tutorial videos I studied, so that whoever buys the asset package has a character to use to play through it when they’ve made their platformer from the pieces of the 2D puzzle here.

So, assuming my assessment of the package’s contents are correct, here’s my more in depth questions about how to go about making these contents:

  • What in the world are these javascript files in the js folder? Are they things I should make myself for the package? Are they even necessary for me to include? I didn’t see an official unity tutorial series surrounding these, is there anything anybody might recommend?

  • What about the shaders? How can I learn more about them and how they might be applied to unity 2d assets? The 2D tutorial DOES go over them, but only very briefly. They certainly are interesting and I’d love to understand them better. It looks like these are necessary for a good art asset package, too. Once again, is there a tutorial series anybody might recommend?

  • How about the textures files? What’s going on there? How do I work with these? Tutorials?

  • Some of these assets are pro only. I currently only have a free copy of unity. Should I refrain from making art assets until I’m using a pro copy of unity?

  • All in all, it looks like these are the necessary pieces of a good 2D art asset package:

  • png files (possibly vector files instead?) for the art assets.

  • Collider files for the parts the character is supposed to interact with.

  • Javascript files.

  • Shader files.

  • Texture files.

  • Probably a few example scenes, along with maybe the unity beanman for testing if I don’t want to bother with making my own player character.

Is there anything I’m missing? I’m very interested in filling the gaps in my knowledge here in order to make quality game art.

Thank you very much Unity Community for reading all of this and helping me answer these questions!

  • Ben
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That Standard Assets folder is from the Standard Assets package that comes bundled with unity, the folder full of shaders inside it you’re describing is from the PRO version of unity “Image effects (pro only)”, usually used on Demos of asset store products by pro users that want to make things look pretiter on the demo I guess. But I’d say it’s good practice to remove those from the asset itself since some of the buyers might not have Pro. So yeah, you shouldn’t worry about those, and you’re definetly not expected to make those.

As I said, most probably the Image Effects from Unity Pro, depth of field and this kind of thing, so no, you don’t need to include those D:

I haven’t used much the 2D Features of unity, so I don’t know if there’s any use for shaders there, but the shaders you described before are used on the Image Effects for unity pro, so if that’s all the shaders you found, that’s what they’re doing there, and they wouldn’t be necessary for a good art package.

What texture files? O.o

You can make art assets for the asset store without using a unity pro copy, no problem

Not sure about the Shader files and the texture files O.o the rest I agree with. hope someone used with Unity 2D can shed some light on that.

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Thanks Dan! I’ll probably keep taking a look at shaders and things just because they look like they can be used to great extent, though. At least, I’m beginning to think I understand how they work, at least. If I understand correctly, below is an example of shaders and textures being overlaid over the game screen?

I’m looking at The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures as if it were made in Unity, here.

In places like 3:27, when they first enter the castle, the whole area is black except for the torches, which glow and light up the area around them. Clearly all the sprites were made, then a purple tint was placed over that, and then a black glow over that, and a bright orange glowing texture for the torches to push the black away, if I have this right. Not to mention, in earlier parts of the video when they’re outside, a thin mist scrolls over everything, which I’m pretty sure is a looping texture. Do I have this right?

I ask because it looks like something of the same technique is being applied in the night scenes of this asset package:

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Blue/indigo background, with a black overlay on all of the foreground objects, and a bright, tinted orange shader for wherever the player goes, in order to simulate something like a lantern. With of course moonrays and things for effect. If this is something that can be done with and sold in unity free, I’d certainly love to use it.

Or should I be asking these questions in the Questions and Answers part of Unity? Or just writing an email to the guy who made it himself?

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I wish I knew more about Unity 2D to be of assistance, hahaha.

As for lighting on the sprites, I found this while searching about it: 2D Lighting - Unity Engine - Unity Discussions

I imagine you could just have a animated texture with low opacity for the kind of mist things… D:

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Yes! That’s just what I was thinking. I really appreciate you trying to help me though, it’s been difficult trying to find some resource for learning the 2D engine effectively.

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in short

  • make good 2d art :slight_smile:
  • tile on not tile based or both, what ever way you want to go
  • make it modular as much as you can but maybe not like every leaf in tree as single object :slight_smile:
  • export as png and include PSD, or vector for easier modifications and/or importing
  • colliders if necessary but not that super super needed imo :slight_smile:
  • make example scene to show how it look in whole glory
  • optionally make some particles, prefabs and bigger chunks that user can place in scene and look good

long version

Prefab is like folder you can put in there couple things together and use it over and over in the scene and when you change one every other prefab change as well :slight_smile: for example you can make torch one object would be stick (maybe in couple verison i different prefabs) second object would be fire as animated sequence or as particle system, third you can attach light to it and so on :slight_smile:

shaders is little scripts that tell how material behave :slight_smile: for example one shader have option to tint color of 2dgraphic/ sprite like a multiplay other shader make whole sprite works like add or screen blend mode in photoshop, othe allow to add additional texture/ channel in texture to specify if part of texture/ sprite is shiny or matte or allow add normal map etc etc.

there 2 main ways to do 2d games grid/ tile based and not tile based :stuck_out_tongue: both have pros and cons and you can make work in both in the same time if you wish :slight_smile: like in your first link Hand Painted Forest
tile for main “walkable” part and non tiel for everything else like background elements, foreground elements, small details etc.
or like in 2D Art Pack - second link just make it look good and don’t bother about tiles :slight_smile:

there are tools that make it very easy and fast to work with tiles, but most of the are pitty robust so you don’t have to worry about how to make tile to make them work :slight_smile:

there are also lots of other assets allow to make 2d arts much better than unity and was way way before unity introduced sprites, some of them have some shaders and different workflows and ways to make better 2d arts and control it

last two are focused on GUI by people use the to create not only gui but whole 2d games as well :slight_smile:

there are tools for making colliders automaticly and lot of people have them, and you can’t make colliders that will work in every system like unity sprites, 2d toolkit, ngui etc, probably every of that tools have its way to handle collider differently, if you want to make colliders make it for unity sprites only

and there are also tools that can create quite good environment foundations very easy and quick with good prepared 2d seamless graphics :slight_smile:

PSD- there is a way to import it in unity but not basic unity, you need additional assets

so it is great if you have psd so if you have this asset you can more easily use it :slight_smile:
and even if you don’t you can use photoshop or free gimp to modify design and export as png
But other than only PSD you need to have png as well, not everybody have photoshop and not everybody want to play with it just place some items and do something fast
so first png with small part so you can make more complex items/ parts/ environments/ prefabs etc, than PSD to make it easier for users to make some modifications

Scenes are like levels or menus but in that examples levels :slight_smile: in them you can show of example how to use your art like Manufactura K4 did :slight_smile:

Standard assets can be imported in unity at any time, you can import some shaders, character controllers, particles etc
pro standard assets version of unity give some more functions like anti aliasing ambient occlusion, bloom, refractions, depth of field etc,

javascript files are script that can build whole game, or c# or boo scripts, or could be very very simple scripts to control one small thing, you don’t have to create scripts for 2d arts if you don’t want to have some advanced effect or interaction or whatever :slight_smile:

textures- if you create textures make it tileable/ seamless if possible :slight_smile:

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Thank you very much for your in-depth response cg_destro! I’m currently looking through what you’ve said and cross referencing it with what I’ve learned so far. Prefabs seem simple enough so far; they’re essentially a folder full of assets all specifically designed to work together in one specific way. Like your stick/animated flame/particle effects for a torch example.

Tiling I have a solid grasp on. It’s easy enough to understand that all square tiles should be made in a single square size. If I want to go off tile, I should still make sure things interact properly, with all assets being saved in a .png format. Everything definitely needs to be modular.

  • What Resolution should .png files be created in? Is there a rule of thumb to it? 4-5x the size of whatever screen the game will be on?

Actually I thought I would have more questions while I was reading your response, but it looks like most of the stuff I’m capable of figuring out as I go. After browsing the unity store I have an idea for the first package I’d like to make, which I will begin work on as soon as I figure out exactly how to build a background appropriately. I’ll probably make a thread detailing my progress and asking questions as I go. Thanks again cg_destro!

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In short bigger is better :slight_smile: users can scale it down easily even inside unity but going up is not an option :slight_smile:

Long version

It’s depend of that what you are making :slight_smile: for texture standard is 2k, sometimes you can even see 4k maps, users can always scale it down and maintain some details from 4k in 2k maps but other way around will not work that great :stuck_out_tongue:

But if you making some smaller icons, 2d items, tiles etc 512 or 1024 should be enough unless you intend it to be seen up close :slight_smile:

If you want to make background for whole game screen then it need to be at least a full HD but might be not enough :slight_smile: I have 2 27’ 2560×1440 monitors and slowly looking for 4K if prices will drop a little, or a lot :stuck_out_tongue: so you could think about that as well and be ready for 4k, next big thing (but of course not for “nextgen” consoles ) :stuck_out_tongue:

If you are making pixel art then it doesn’t matter that much, you can scale it up and it will look good because it’s pixelarts and you can count ale the pixels :slight_smile:
And if you are creating arts in illustrator/ inkscape and include vector files then it doesn’t matter as well what resolution png-s have :slight_smile: you can even import svg directly in unity for resolution independence, but like always need additional asset for that :slight_smile:

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I had a feeling vector files wouldn’t make a difference, but it’s good to hear they can be directly imported into unity. I have some experience making vector files for games, so it will be good practice. I guess the rule of thumb for resolution size is just about twice whatever resolution the screen you’re viewing it in is at? So Yeah, 5k x 3k or so for backgrounds makes sense. Thanks for the tip!

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Alright, I practiced with the unity 2D thing and I’m thinking I’m starting to get a handle at how assets are made, how to apply materials, lights, arranging things between sorting layers and all that. I think I’m ready to start making the kind of art assets that don’t work with shaders or materials and things like that, but I’m learning all of this hoping to make something that uses more of Unity’s capabilities later. My goal is to make something that uses textures, shaders, etc with the same proficiency as that original Manufactura asset set. I’m thinking of doing something with castles. For some reason I can’t seem to find anything like that available in the asset store 2D section, and you’d think that would be more in demand.

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Here’s a few sketches on what I’m thinking of doing with this thing. Trying to figure out what to do for foreground/middleground/background. None of these are final products obviously, I’m just thinking about what direction to go in with all of this. I’m not sure if a forest is a good idea yet.

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