An asset is any item that you use in your Unity project to create your application, such as textures, 3D models, or sound files. Assets can include:
VisualElement class. You can style the look, define the behaviour, and display it on screen as part of the UI. More infoTo use assets in Unity, you must import them into your project. You can add assets to the Assets folder of your project, or use scripts to import assets automatically.
Unity supports a wide range of asset formats. For more information, refer to Supported asset type reference.
If you’re working on a complex project with a large team of people, you can use the Unity Accelerator cache server to speed up asset management.
Unity uses the Asset Database to store the assets in your project and maintain consistency between the original source files and their imported versions used by your application at runtime. You can use the Import Activity window to inspect how Unity imports the assets in your project.
You can use AssetBundles to group together assets in an archive file format, which you can then use to update assets remotely, or provide DLC content for your application.
You can also use asset packagesA collection of files and data from Unity projects, or elements of projects, which are compressed and stored in one file, similar to Zip files, with the .unitypackage extension. Asset packages are a handy way of sharing and re-using Unity projects and collections of assets. More info
See in Glossary to package assets together to share between other Unity projects.
You can perform many of the loading, importing, and unloading operations that Unity does with the Asset Database APIs.
An alternative method of managing loading assets is with the Resources system, but it can impact on the performance of your application.
The Addressables package provides a streamlined workflow for managing asset loading at runtime and is the recommended system for organizing assets in Unity projects.