The mess of me adding textures

When I add textures, there seems to be no apparent ease to it provided by the editor. It goes to a big pile of all my textures in the project which I must sift through each time. Since the idea of the editor is to make everything easier, I am wondering about this, and that I cannot simply drag and drop the textures into the inspection window, or at the least have a folder explorer that pops up with "select, keep the asset folder structure intact, so I am not presented with 100's of textures in my library each time I want to find a single one.

It could be I am missing something, this is why I ask this question. Thanks.

 

most people will just click and drag references in from the Project view

 

I cannot work this out. I do dragging for some things. But with textures, say I am painting terrain, and need to add textures for that, or at the moment I am making a skybox in create material, it opens up the "select texture", and I have tried to drag to places, but no luck.

 

I organize my texture files into folders just like everything else in my project... I guess I'm not sure what your situation is here. You need to save textures into your project, and then drag them from the project window into slots wherever your inspector is asking for them.

 

Also, this is off-topic but something you may want to read...
https://forum.unity.com/threads/whats-the-deal-with-those-cryptic-user-names-lately.511792/

 

I also have all my textures organised, and my whole asset system nicely organised. And this is why I am searching for a better way, since I cannot seem to drag and drop textures. The example is I have gone to Assets/ Create/ Material.
----> Then Shader / Skybox 6 sided. Then I am presented with Six Icons to "select texture". I cannot drag from the Project window, to these Icons.

I looked at my profile about the name issue. And could not find the solution. So I will read the thread there.

 

It sounds like something may be wrong. You should be able to drag a texture from the project panel to an easy inspector texture field. As long as
A) you are dragging a texture (image)
B) it is the appropriate type (you can’t drag a sprite onto a skybox for example)

 

Right, this is the direct file selection box, you can't drag/drop here. If you click on the texture/select slot it will give you this dialog. This is not what you want. You should be able to, instead, drag from your project right onto the texture slot, without clicking on the texture slot.

Edit: Nevermind, I think I misunderstood what you were saying :/

 

It is strange to me. Because Yesterday I could not do it either with Terrain, but now it does work. Today, I can drag to the Terrain after seeing the Box with the Select Icon on the lower right side. However, it would be far easier, to be able to drag directly into the Textures Space, without having to click Edit Textures / Add texture. Because then it appears I need to repeat the Edit Textures, Add/texture One at a time. I am surprised I cannot drag a group of textures in one drag.

Now, on the Skybox, it also works, and it was as you say, not working because of that particular texture I was choosing. I do not know what to make of yesterday, if I dragging the wrong thing again, perhaps I was tired at the time.

Thanks

 

To respond to the other reply, that is what would be easiest, to drag into the texture slot, as mentioned above. I can drag the textures one by one to the Icon Box after clicking Edit / Add.

 

I think it would be far easier if the editor had universal textures for terrain, not per terrain. Because when you have terrain that borders each other, which always happens, you cross the textures a fair bit. Finding the texture adding process a bit slow. Just a suggestion.

 

Have I erred by making multiple terrains as per editor limitations? I note that there is visible join lines between them and I do not want these to show in the game at all. The issue I had is that the editor messes your mountains if you increase the terrain size. Does anyone have any workarounds?

 

There's a whole Asset Store full of workarounds for all sorts of terrain issues. I'm not saying that to be flippant, I'm just saying that countless people experience problems working with terrain and have made solutions which they can offer to other people with the same problems.

When working with multiple terrains you're inevitably either going to have to learn how to code to fix a variety of these types of problems yourself, or find solutions on the store.

 

The built-in terrain workflow with Unity leaves much to be desired. The components do indeed support everything you need to handle all of the issues you've run into, but the built-in tools for using them may not. That said, I haven't personally found that to be an issue because the built-in tools are for hand-crafting terrain, and there's no way in heck I'm going to hand-craft so much of it that I need more than one tile!

I've experience with TerrainComposer and MapMagic, neither of which had those issues when working across multiple terrains, and both of which use workflows that are designed to create huge terrains without having to hand-paint it piece by piece. There are also a bunch of smaller plugins which are for hand-painting over multiple Terrains, stitching terrains together, and stuff like that. I haven't used any to make recommendations, though.

 

Ching. Solution to Everything. I like your style. Ok, now am I going to buy assets? It is not that I am a stingey money worrier, but I was putting myself up to the Free Challenge. There was a particular asset I found very tempting for $15.

Since this is not about "help" as per say, I was interested in Opinions on One big terrain vs multiple. Pros and Cons I bet. I am guessing either can be achieved, as coding can achieve all in your whole "Solution to Everything" Ethos.

 

"and there's no way in heck I'm going to hand-craft so much of it that I need more than one tile!" Depends on your game style. I have taken my landscape as my grand masterpiece. Though if it causes lag, it could be an issue. It is all "as I go", I don't even know what game I am really designing, only a rough leaning towards genre of the games I have most enjoyed.

OK, nice to hear that I can solve all these troubles. And that the editor as is, to be only the foundation.

 

On way to do it is to come up with a good way to name them and/or organizing them in directories. for example you might choose a naming convention that is something like <tiling|nontiling>_<grass|cement|brushedmetal|etc>_<some kind of descriptive term like "old" or "rusty" or "cracked">. You can then use the built-in search to start finding textures without having to sift through your filesystem as much.

 

1/2 of the "game" might be called "work" is organisation. I find the more organised you are, the less frustrated you are, the better you do your art, whatever that art might be. Thus I am always pushing forwards into the momentum of "what makes it all easier". Hence the adding of textures was simply me stressing into space a desire for more streamlined solution. My own spirit screams out when it feels something needs more automation in my life, or in this line of activity, the same applies. So in my Garden I have automated watering systems etc. I believe strongly in making Life easier, and all flows from finding those ways, but strange that people often work counter to that, and myself at times.