Memory is never freed

I load a scene unload that scene back to the main menu. The textures used in that level persist in memory. For example, you can see Cow_Albedo in the 2nd column. The cow is only referenced in that scene. I thought this was an editor only issue, but it's happening in the player too. I am calling
Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets();
System.GC.Collect();

Huge problem because eventually players run out of memory and crash.

What is going on here?

 

Are you sure no references exist? ScriptableObjects, prefabs, nothing?

 

There's no explanation for it. I stripped down the prefab to the animator and the LOD Group and the issue still occurs.

 

@RakNet Right clicking the asset in the project view -> Find refs in scene returns absolutely nothing in the hierarchy search?

 

Wasn't aware this feature existed, it pulls up my class that manages addressables.

I load the scene without the cow, no cow texture in memory.
I pause the game, put the cow in the scene in the editor, delete the cow, and call GC.Collect. Cow texture is still in memory

 

How does your class that handles addressables work? Any reference at all to the asset will load it in memory, even if it's not in the scene. If you had a "Bullet Factory" GameObject with every bullet prefab linked, every asset related to those bullets will be loaded, even if you haven't created a single bullet.

 

GC.Collect is only a function of the Mono / .NET framework. Unity is a C++ engine. When you create UnityEngine.Object derived objects they usually need to be destroyed when they are no longer used. Certain objects are destroyed automatically when a new scene loads, though not all of them. However Unity has the method Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets which is similar to GC.Collect but does actually destroy assets which are currently not used by any object in the scene. AFAIK this is implicitly called when a new scene loads.