Feedback Importing textures for cubemaps stopped listing texture base in project tab

Today I realized that since Unity 2017 the "Inspector > Texture Importer > Cube" stopped listing the original texture in the project tab making it non-available for using a base texture along side with the cube map. Unfortunately, the cube map must now be used solely. Not very happy about it as in (my) situations there I need both (cube map and its origin texture) I will have to import the same texture twice thus will instantly double my project's file size that goes up from 12GB to 24GB !!! Actually the same is true (was always true) for importing textures that could be used for alpha and for normal maps, here, I would also have to import the same textures twice to make this work.

As I have published my assetpackage in the Asset Store (with my textures as a core feature) using this deprecated feature, importing into 2017/2018 breaks all material connections that me or a purchaser will have to fix, fixing several hundred materials manually(!) is not a fun job.

For better understanding I attached 2 screenshots for comparison of the project tab in Unity 5.+ and Unity 2017+



I would like to have this feature back and actually also for texture types where it make sense like grey maps/alpha/normals. For example using black and white texture for clouds and at the same time for normal maps.

I believe it could make good sense to have a texture source bin in Unity as in other software packages that use footage bins as a source for further treatment and thus being more efficient.

 

Can be that another plug-in from the asset store (that interacts with the Hierarchy) is somehow creating problems?
Did you try in an empty project if this problem persists?

 

Just checked without any plugins in new project, imported assetpackage freshly. Situation still the same as described above. Is a original texture still available alongside a respective cubemap in your Unity Editor?

 

Also just imported a new texture into empty project. Still same issue!