Greetings 2D creators! We have Sprite Atlas v2 updates in Unity 2022.1 to share with you.
What’s new? Sprite Atlas v2 is the default in new projects
Sprite Atlas v2 is now the best atlassing solution we provide. Therefore from this version forward it will be the default atlassing option in any new Unity project. As a reminder, Sprite Atlas v2 brings support for Accelerator and as of 2021.2 provides full support for folders as packable objects.
Sprite Atlas v2 now supports Presets
This means that you can make presets of Sprite Atlases that contain settings for packing, platforms, textures and secondary textures.
What can you do?
Try it out and let us know what you think of the additions and improvements. We want to know what works as expected, what doesn’t and what is missing. We’d love to see how you use them as well, so please show off all the cool things that you make with them!
@rustum Using Sprite Atlas v2 in 2022.1+ I am getting a warning:
“Source Texture (image_a) of Sprite (image_a) is using compressed format. To ensure no loss in source pixel details when packing to SpriteAtlas, please use uncompressed format in TextureImporter.”
Should that be the default approach now, leaving the imported images uncompressed in their folder? I suppose those will not get included in the game build, only the atlas will?
Yes, please use uncompressed format for the source textures of Sprites if they are part of SpriteAtlas because :
Only SpriteAtlas textures are ever shipped if sprites are part of SpriteAtlas.
When SpriteAtlas textures are packed, the original pixel of source textures need to be fetched. If they are compressed, this usually involves decompression and might result in lossy pixels depending on the compressed format.
If the sprites are part of SpriteSheets this may also result in artifacts depending on the compressed format.
Also speeds up SpriteAtlas packing as it does not involve decompression (some formats can be slow to decompress).
So its always recommended to use Uncompressed format for source textures and the desired compression format for SpriteAtlas.
Will this be rolled out to LTS versions of Unity?
We are working with the old sprite packer for a game in full production and would like to stay on an LTS version if possible, but are also having some really long sprite atlas creation times. For now we are disabling sprite atlas creation in the editor (only builds). We don’t want to use the old v2 because of it’s limitations in not being able to add folders. We are working with huge sprites for 4K, so things are taking a while:)
Hi! Do you have any plans for sprite slicing? When you have a couple of backgrounds and they can’t be placed in 2048x2048, we can slice them in small cubes to fit our atlas.
But Sprite Atlas V2 is already in 2021.3! It’s just that V1 is default in 2022, and V2 is marked as “experimental” in 2021.
So the question is, what kind of updates does the experimental version in 2021.3 get? I assume that no updates gets in, but if it’s a part of a package (2D Common? idk), then the updates could be included.
I’m not familiar with any of these specific changes.
I was simply stating an immutable fact that is law inside Unity and is strictly controlled and only broken for the most exceptional circumstances which is that only bug fixes are backported; features are not.
No amount of, you could do it or it’s possible would change that. I only state this on the forums because it’s not common knowledge for devs.
Some Unity devs might sneak a “bug fix” as a backport which is actually a feature change but that’s not something you want to get caught doing without permission. Especially so to an LTS.
Someone like @Venkify could answer any specifics of what lands where and directly to your question.
As @MelvMay mentioned new Features such as Preset support and Always On that is only available in 2022.* versions will not be backported.
In 2021.3 SpriteAtlas V2 received feature parity with V1 and will be actively maintained (bugfixes for existing features in 2021.3 will be backported). Thanks.
