How to assign assets to non-monobehaviour classes?

I want to use a non-monobehaviour class that has a Sprite field. As it can't be attached to a game object, I can't expose the Sprite field in the editor and therefore can't assign a Sprite.

I thought about creating an Assets prefab that is instantiated briefly when the game starts and loads all the sprites into public static fields so I can access them anywhere with

Assets.Sprites.someSprite

but this feels messy.

I'm also aware of

Resources.Load<T>("someSprite");

but this isn't recommended for a few reasons.

Is there a clean way of doing this?

 

Maybe Addressables might be a good fit for you. They are the recommended solution for loading assets at runtime.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/com.unity.addressables.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.addressables@1.19/manual/index.html

If all you want is a convenient way to reference sprites then you could list (List<Sprite>) them in a ScriptableObject object and then pass a reference to that SO around. Of course you would have to either load or hardwire the SO somewhere. The advantage would be that all you need is a single ref to that SO.

 

The simplest way to get you started would be to make a class that loaded individual sprites like below.

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. public class ASpriteAnimation
3. {
4.     Sprite[] sprites= new Sprite[3];
5.     public class LoadSprites()
6.     {
7.         sprites[0] = Resources.Load<Sprite>("SpritePath/Sprite0);
8.         sprites[1] = Resources.Load<Sprite>("SpritePath/Sprite1);
9.         sprites[2] = Resources.Load<Sprite>("SpritePath/Sprite2);
10.    }
11. }