The Assets panel
Everything in a project's assets folder appears in the Assets panel: images, sounds, maps, scenes, prefabs, scripts and the rest. This page covers the folder tree and favorites, grid and list views, searching, creating assets and folders, renaming, moving and deleting, using assets elsewhere in the editor, and checking the project's health.
Open the panel with CtrlShiftA or Window › Panels › Assets. It follows changes on disk as they happen, so files you add, change or delete in another program show up at once.
Folders and favorites
The left side of the panel is a folder tree, starting at assets. Click a folder to open it; the right side shows what it contains. The breadcrumbs above the files show where you are; click one to go back up, or press Backspace to go up one folder.
Favorites at the top of the tree collects the assets and folders you use often. Right-click an asset and choose Add to favorites to add it; favorites show a star on their tile.
The panel remembers, per project, its view, thumbnail size, sorting, favorites and which folders are expanded.
Grid and list
The buttons at the right of the toolbar switch between the views:
- Grid shows a thumbnail of each asset: textures show their first sprite, sounds their waveform, fonts "Aa" in the font, atlases a few of their sprites, and other assets their kind's icon. The slider in the footer sizes the thumbnails.
- List shows one row per asset with its Name, Kind, Size and Modified time. Click a column header to sort by it.
The sort button in the toolbar sorts by name, kind, size or modification time; choose the same order again to reverse it. Thumbnails are drawn in the background and redrawn when an asset or its import settings change.
Search
Type in the search box, or press CtrlF with the panel focused. Search covers the whole project, not just the open folder: the breadcrumbs read Searching all assets, and Clear returns to the folder.
| Search | Finds |
|---|---|
hero | Assets whose name contains hero |
kind:texture | Assets of a kind: texture, atlas, font, audio, scene, prefab, material, shader, particles, tilemap, script, plugin, localization or folder. The start of the kind's name works too, so kind:tex and kind:tile find the same. type: and t: work as kind:. |
tag:enemy | Assets with a label that starts with enemy. label: and l: work too. |
ext:ogg | Assets with that file extension |
guid:9a2c or a full guid | The asset with that guid. id: works too. |
is:fav | Favorites only |
Combine terms to narrow the search: kind:audio tag:music finds music. The filter button next to the search box shows a chip per kind with the number of assets of that kind; click chips to show only those kinds.
Labels are tags you give assets in the asset inspector, such as music or enemy, to find them and to include them in builds by label.
Select and open
| Do | How |
|---|---|
| Select | Click. Shift+click selects a range, Ctrl+click adds or removes one asset. Arrow keys move the selection; CtrlA selects everything in the folder; Escape clears the selection. |
| Inspect | Select an asset to show it in the Inspector panel: its import settings, labels and what uses it. See Importing assets. |
| Open | Double-click, or press Enter. Folders open in the panel, scenes open in the viewport, and scripts and shaders open in your code editor. Other assets are selected and shown in the Inspector. |
Create assets
Click Create in the panel's toolbar, or right-click empty space and choose Create, to make a new asset in the open folder. The same items are in Assets › Create.
| Item | Creates |
|---|---|
| Folder | New Folder |
| Scene | New Scene.tscene, with a camera |
| Prefab | New Prefab.tprefab, with one empty entity |
| Tile Map | A .hexy map, after asking for its name, grid and cell size. See Maps and grids. |
| C# Script | A script, after asking for its class name and template |
| Script… | The same, with a choice of folder inside scripts |
| Material | New Material.tmaterial. See Materials and shaders. |
| Sprite Atlas | New Atlas.tatlas, with the textures or folders you had selected as its sources. See Sprite atlases. |
| Particle Preset | A .tparticles preset from one of the built-in effects. See Particles. |
| Localization Table | Strings.tloc, with the game's title as its first string. See Localization. |
New assets start with their name selected, so you can type the name right away.
Rename, duplicate, move and delete
| Do | How |
|---|---|
| Rename | F2, or Rename in the context menu. Enter confirms, Escape cancels. |
| Duplicate | CtrlD. The copy is named name 1 and gets a new guid and the same import settings. |
| Move | Drag assets onto a folder in the grid, the tree or the breadcrumbs |
| Delete | Delete. The editor asks first and warns when other assets use the ones you delete. |
Every operation keeps the .meta file with its asset and is one undo step. Scenes and other assets refer to assets by guid, not by path, so renaming and moving never break references. Deleted assets go to the project's trash, .talesmith/trash, in a folder per deletion; CtrlZ brings them back with their guid.
The context menu
Right-click an asset for:
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Open | As double-clicking |
| Show in file manager | Opens the folder in your system's file manager (Reveal in Finder on macOS) |
| Rename, Duplicate, Delete | As their shortcuts |
| Add to favorites, Remove from favorites | |
| Copy path | Copies the asset's path, such as assets/sprites/hero.png |
| Copy guid | Copies its guid |
| Reimport | Imports the asset again, for example after changing a file another program keeps open |
| Create | The Create menu |
Right-clicking empty space offers Create, Import files…, Show in file manager, Rescan assets and Asset health….
Use assets elsewhere
Drag assets out of the panel:
- Into the viewport or the hierarchy to create entities: textures become sprites, maps become tile maps, particle presets become emitters, sounds become audio sources and prefabs become instances. See The scene viewport.
- Onto an asset field in the Inspector, such as a sprite's Texture, to set it.
- Onto a sprite atlas's source list, to pack it.
Asset health
Assets › Asset health…, also in the panel's context menu and the command palette, checks the whole project:
| Section | Lists |
|---|---|
| Missing references | Assets that refer to something that no longer exists, such as a material whose shader was deleted |
| Unreadable .meta files | .meta files that could not be read. They were replaced with new ones; the originals are kept next to them as hidden .invalid files. |
| Orphaned .meta files | .meta files left behind by assets deleted or moved outside the editor |
| Repaired duplicate guids | Copies of assets that had their original's guid and were given a new one |
| Unreferenced assets | Assets nothing refers to. Scripts may still load them by path, so these are not problems. |
Only the first three count as problems; the other two are for information. The dialog says All assets are healthy only when no section lists anything. Click an entry's arrow to show it in the Assets panel. Remove orphaned .meta files deletes the orphans, and Check again runs the check again after you fix something.