Question Asking for advice how to manage Asset Groups

I created myself a major workflow issue with how I manage Groups in the Addressables Groups window.

We have a character editor that allows to choose between a lot of different variations. I want each of these asset variations to be stored in a separate asset group. Each variation is stored in its own sub-directory and contains one or multiple assets. I want to store them in separate bundles to:

• Have finer memory control over them
• Add new content to the game without having to rebuild existing asset groups
• Change existing content without having to rebuild other existing asset groups (faster build times)

However, the way I add asset groups to the project is extremely tedious and takes a lot of time.

In the following video I explain the issue I'm facing.

 

@davidla_unity @TreyK-47 Do you mind to watch the video and give me some tips?

 

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/c...undledAssetGroupSchema.BundlePackingMode.html

Have you tried this group setting? This lets you generate separate asset bundle for each asset or group them by labels.

I'm trying to figure out my workflow too, and I think for simplicity I'll just stick most of my assets in a single group, pack them into separate asset bundles and be done with it.

 

Thank you for the reply.

I just tested the "Pack Separately" option, but I don't understand what it's doing. According to the documentation:

... I assumed when I add the "body" directory as shown in the video, it would store the content of each sub-folder to a separate bundle. This isn't the case though.

This is the project structure:



I added the "Assets/art/body" and "Assets/art/hair" directories to the Addressables Groups window and changed their "Bundle Mode" to "Pack Separately":



Then I ran the "Clean Build > All" and "New Build > Default Build Script" steps. This created the following bundles...

What's different is that Addressables now stores the bundles in directories:



But each directory just contains one bundle where all assets are stored together:


I assumed (or hoped) that Addressables would create a bundle for every directory that's located directly under "Asserts/art/body". So that I would find bundles for "body_01", "body_01_01", "body_02" etc.

 

That's how I would interpret that description as well, but as far as I've figured out, adding folders to addressables forces them into the same bundle. You should try adding each asset separately. Currently I'm using a modified version of Unity Addressable Importer to automatically add all assets in given directories.

 

Thank you for the reply @andymilsom.

Yes, this helps somewhat. But what I'm really looking for is to add a single folder to a Group ("Assets/art/hair/") and Unity creates a separate assetbundle for each subfolder ("Assets/art/hair/hair_01_01", "Assets/art/hair/hair_01_02", etc).

If this isn't supported yet, the question becomes:

1. Can you support this? It certainly makes managing content a lot easier!
2. Can I implement it myself, by extending Addressables without changing the package code itself?

"Packed Assets" is probably the one that's used the most. Makes sense to organize the UI around "what's used most" to me.

Thank you, I wasn't aware of this option.

 

Thank you for the reply.

I used the "Pack Separately" setting for a couple of months by now and I can tell you with confidence, that using a "Double Pack Separately" setting would help me with the groups setup and maintenance significantly.

Right now, every time an artist adds a new "hat" for example, someone with a more technical background must update the Addressables group by hand.

The "Double Pack Separately" setting definitely would be a good addition for me. That's why there exist different Bundle Mode settings in the first place I would think, to cover different use-cases.

 

You can automate generating groups with an editor script. I would recommend going that way. Then everytime someone adds new art you press a button and it manages the groups however you like.

Theres a lot of ways you could do it, but even if you just preface folders with certain things you can have a script say something like "if the names prefix is "__hat__", then make a group like this".

When projects get large, manually managing the groups is an impossibility, you have to make your own automation.

 

I agree with @Peter77, this should be a setting. Or maybe add ability to set "Pack separately Depth" value per folder-entry in Addressable Group. Because with current functionality to achieve efficient workflow you are required to write custom AssetPostprocessor that will automatically add/move explicit entries to "Pack Separately" groups when you add/move/delete assets in certain folder. But isn't this exactly what Addressables is already doing under the hood anyway? So why add another layer of automation if you can just expand on the existing built-in functionality.

 

About a year later and Addressables is still not providing this functionality. Very disappointing.