Feedback 2D Tilemap Individual Sorting - Set Cell Sorting Point

Hi,
So I'm trying to make use of the individual sorting mode, but it seems it's only possible to sort from the middle of the tiles/cells?

Would it be possible to add an option to sort from different corners of the cell? I'm particularly interested in sorting from the bottom.

Usecase, let's use a piece of a pole as an example (see attached image for illustrations):
Objects that are 2 tiles where you want the bottom tile to act as the collider and the top be something the player can walk behind.

Illustration 2: As long as the player is above the middle of the cell everything is sorting correctly.

Illustration 3: But as soon as the player is below the pole will sort below. The player can walk below the middle since the collider is not one full cell.

Illustration 1: And you can't just put the top fence tile to a higher sorting layer as the player is taller than one cell, meaning he will be able to cover more than 1 cell.


This is of course already possible but it ends up being a mess where you set the pivot in each tile sprite and change the anchoring.

 

So the problem is that you want to automatically have correct pivot points without going into the SpriteEditor and setting them? This could be possible with an Editor script that helps you process a texture and adjust its pivots.

Take a look at the TextureImporter scripting API
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/TextureImporter.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/TextureImporter-spritesheet.html

In particular, the spritesheet field. It uses SpriteMetaData
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/SpriteMetaData.html

A outline for the script could be as follows:

• if currently selected asset within Project is a texture, open it with TextureImporter
• go through its sprites and adjust the pivot to the desired position
• note: if not a spritesheet (Multiple Mode), then use https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/TextureImporter-spritePivot.html instead
• importer.SaveAndReimport

And you're done. Just run the editor script whenever you want to mass-process a new texture.

 

"This could be possible with an Editor script that helps you process a texture and adjust its pivots."

This should work. IIRC I did this a while back using SpriteMetaData.

 

Thank you for the replies! I get how this would solve it.

This was in hope as feedback to the Unity team, I was hoping for an option on the tilemap component to have a "Cell Tile Sort Point" with the option to select bottom.This way you would only need a tilemap/layer for everything you want to have sorted this way. Might be it's not that trivial to implement - but for me, it would simplify the workflow.

 

My use case would be in the first post, if it's not clear just let me know and I'll try and clarify.
But after some experimenting, I think it's fine already. What one can do is reslice the sprites and set pivot to bottom, and select to keep the already created slices (so tiles don't loose reference). And change the anchor point to the bottom of the individual sorting tilemap component. So should be all good.