Unity's long loading/importing

I've noticed, especially with the 3D Game Kit, long loading times when I first take a look. It's taken over 10 minutes on my HDD and I had to force quit because I didn't want to wait that long.

Unity on my computer is saved onto my C:/Drive. Not a SSD. I didn't know if purchasing and saving my projects to a SSD would help with loading the Game Kit back up on next loads. (if projects are saved there it would not access my C drive). I have 32GB memory and thought I wouldn't have to wait as long, but my hard drive is slowing performance?

I think I'll stick to the 2D Game Kit until I get patience

 

Turning off "Compress Assets on Import" can make the import process a little faster:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Preferences.html

 

Unity generally deals with large numbers of small files, which is a worst case scenario for a traditional HDD, but what SSD storage excels at.

 

Me again.
What are the odds of installing Unity on a 500GB SSD? Has anyone done this?
That way the loading times would be super quick.

 

Not so much in my experience, but it's somewhat faster. Most time on the import process is often spent to convert source assets into Unity's proprietary format, rather than IO.

Think of converting a large texture to ETC format, it takes a long time to complete, especially if it's using high-quality mode. Importing and compressing a long(er) audio file takes quite long as well. In both examples, a SSD would not help.

SSD probably helps when Unity is just loading small assets that don't have a conversion step, but this is pretty fast anyway.

1. In order to by-pass the compression step, you can use turn off "Compress Assets on Import":
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Preferences.html

The downside when turning off "Compress Assets on Import", it that Unity will still compress them when building a Player. If you don't do this (often), maybe it's already an option for you.

2. Another approach to speed up the import process is to use the Cache Server. They also support a "Local" mode, where you just run it on the same computer.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CacheServer.html

The Cache Server idea is that once an asset has been imported, Unity caches the result. The next time the asset is requested and it wasn't modify in the meantime, it can be served from the cache.

If you work in a team in the same network, you normally want to use a Cache Server. Then just one person, the one who adds the asset, has to wait for the long import process. Other team member automatically get the cached files, which is just a file copy.

Another use-case when you want to use the Cache Server is if you often switch platforms. Like you need to build for iOS, Android, etc and always have to switch the build target.

Unity Technologies have mentioned at various Unite talks they're either working or want to work on import pipeline performance improvements. They are aware of the problem, the improvements are just not available at the time of writing. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find that talk right now, just the general "performance by default" talk. It starts at around 17:10.

Spoiler: Unity at GDC - Evolving Unity

 

Out of idle curiosity, is there any reasonable way to save some of the stuff you'd use on multiple projects, like the unity standard assets, as the post-import file type so they're already prepared?

Just getting into the scene and want to get into any good habits I can find.

 

Export as asset.

Why thinking supper odd. I would say, not an unusual.

 

I usually have builder projects so I can work in isolation and I don't hurt my main project if I screw up something. And then I export things in .unitypackage and import it in the main project when I feel it's working as I intended.

 

Thank you, that's definitely something I can work with.

 

The Cache Server is serving more or less post-import files.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CacheServer.html

 

Well I'll let you know that buying the external SSD didn't help with the importing from Asset Store speeds. 2D Game Kit took around 10 minutes to import, so, I wasted my money I think.

 

I don't know these kits, but you said it took 10 min for import 2D kit, while was over +10 min for 3D kit.
You would need check, how long take import of 2D kit on HDD.

Anyway, you should be able notice differences when working with loaded assets. You don't load / import big asset every day. Also, speeding up starting up software also should be noticeable. I.e. VS.

 

I work on a 256 SSD and unity opens slow as hell. Even with lightweight projects. But so does Unreal.

Most my 3d apps are quick, and my computer generally does everything fast. I figured this is just how game engines are.

 

For me, at Unity startup, slowest part is project selection scree. When menu tries connect to network. Even I tell work offline, it tends to freeze. After that is wizzing for me. But I have relatively little number of assets.

However, moving project to new version, or asset import, from older version, even by small iteration, which I think this is what OP is experiencing, is unnecessarily and annoyingly long, to the point, that who designed this part of Unity, I could call (left for your imagination to complete).

 

So right now I has 300gbs before I got my hard drive replaced and it took a long time but now with my new one with 111gbs for some reason its faster

 

to be honest it took only 20 min for me,, first time only ofc also i have 200 gb ssd,8gb ram,i5 5th gen

 

It takes you like 10 minutes to upload? It takes me more than an hour just for me to load up 6 pieces of small code (really). Stop being impatient others have it worst