How to update blender files

I have been told that editing anything in the project folder with any method other than unity is really bad. However I have been creating blender files and dragging them into the project in unity, unity rather than updating the blender file though just makes a copy of it and screws up my project. So my question is, am I doing something wrong or is it safe to create new files in the project folder through blender and edit them later on with blender, or is that gonna screw anything up?

 

I use Blender files for 99.9% of my artwork and I edit them right in place in the Unity asset tree. Unity recognizes the change and imports it fine pretty much 100% of the time. I do not do a manual export to FBX first, just letting the automagic way work.

In your source control ignore file (like .hgignore or .gitignore) you should ignore *.blend1* and *.blend2* files, which are the automatic backups that Blender leaves behind, and of course their meta files too.

 

So it is safe to save all my files straight into the project folder with blender or even just drag em in there with windows? Someone told me to only use unity and nothing else to change that stuff, is this false or outdated information?

 

It's incomplete information. You can add assets directly through explorer/finder. Unity will see it and process it. But once you have added something, if you need to move or rename it, it is best to do that directly in the project window. It could mess things up if start moving stuff around outside of unity.

And I do it the same way as Kurt for blender files. I put the blend file in unity and edit from there. It's a pretty smooth process.

 

Elaborating on what @zombiegorilla said above, unity uses the meta files to track a unique ID for every asset. If you move something around in the Unity asset folder structure outside of Unity, and fail to move its meta file (you will not be able to even SEE the meta files unless you enable visible Meta Files in the editor, which you must do for source control in any case... you are using source control, right?), then Unity will lose the reference to the asset.