Texture Packer folder structure Help Please

justifun

I'm trying to figure out how to proper use the texture packer tool.

I have several characters, each in their own sub folder.
each sub folder has the spine file, and a sub folder with the related images for each character

I'd like to pack all character together into one set of atlases cause each character currently uses their own seperate one.

What files need to be in the "input" folder to get the texture packer to work correctly?

thanks

So im getting a bit closer, but its still not working.

Currently when i pack using the texture packer, and using "combine sub folders" in my export folder i get 2 files

Characters.atlas.txt and Characters.png

The png appears to have packed the images all together properly, however there's no json files.

So i tried exporting each character separately "without" creating an atlas and adding those .json files to the export folder.

When i bring these 4 files into the unity project though, i get this error

Could not find matching AtlasAsset for Character1
Could not find matching AtlasAsset for Character2

🙁

Pharan

"Could not find matching AtlasAsset for Character1" is just a warning in Unity.
It means it couldn't find it automatically and you have to assign the atlas asset yourself.
After you do, it will work correctly.

justifun

So I should just point it to the merged packed atlas? I tried that but it kept asking over and over like 20 times and didn't appear to be doing anything.

Pharan

Yeah, the merged atlas should work as long as the paths in the atlas match the paths/attachment names you have in Spine.

If each of your spine projects and skeletons are in their own subfolder, and you packed their parent folder, I think you need to have "flatten paths" checked.

justifun

So the ideal way to setup a structure for all characters would be to have a root folder "Characters" and within each folder there is a sub folder called "Character 1" Character 2" etc

then when setting up each character you'd have to reference that parent folder then the sub folder, so that the resulting file paths would be

Character/Character1/body.png
Character/Character1/Head.png
etc

And only then would the texture packer work correctly?

Or perhaps i'm expecting it to all work another way.

Ideally i'm hoping that you can have multiple .json files with the animation data of each character, and one main atlas that they all reference, resulting in only 1 image to import instead of 20 different ones. is that how's its intended to work?

thx

Pharan

I don't know about ideal but that's one way.
The subfolders help you avoid filename collisions by including the folder name in the path. ie, two of your skeletons might each have a different image named "head.png".
In that case, your path would just be character1/head.png, and not character/character1/head.png.
And your spine project files could be in any folder as long as the image node points to the parent folder.

But if you made sure everything had unique filenames, your project files could be in the same folder as its images (without having to change the base image path), and you could just use "flatten paths" when you pack the parent folder.