How to associate resource files to an entity?

Hi, I'm new to ECS and have a basic question.

I have a Material in my project that I'd like to apply to a MeshInstanceRendererComponent on one of my entities (I have a reference to this entity already)

In normal Unity I would just drag and drop in the inspector or use Resources.Load()

How would I do this? Is there a recommended workflow for ECS?

 

It is rather convoluted but you can make a SharedComponentDataWrapper in your scene with Material field then you could drag and drop. This makes a new entity holding that material. ECS system then try to get that entity containing the drag and dropped Material and assign to MIRs.

 

Can you give an example?

 

AComponent.cs

[Serializable]
public struct A : ISharedComponentData { public Material m; }
public class AComponent : SharedComponentDataWrapper<A> { }

Attach to GO, drag drop, then in system

var cg = GetComponentGroup(typeof(A))
Material mat = cg.GetSharedComponentDataArray<A>()[0].m;

 

Is there really no other way? What if I have tons of objects in my scene? Seems like quite a hack without the ease of use the editor provides since I'd need to make a large Material array ordered by index (instead of name or reference to an entity).

Is this one of the limitations of Pure ECS? Is Pure ECS even possible with custom Materials in the game?

 

Look at the Addressable Assets Package:

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.addressables@0.4/manual/index.html

 

That looks awesome. But I don't see Addressable Assets in 2018.2.19f1?

 

You must add Addressables in to manifest manually, first time.

 

What's the entry / version to add? Copy/paste from your manifest?

 

Look at: