Loading 3d models in unity editor and in deployed app

Question

I've created an app that make use of models that in editor I load using UnityEditor.AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath . If I try to deploy the app, it says that Unity Editor can't be used.

So which is the best strategy that I should apply to load my models at run time, outside the editor?

Answer 1

Always check that the API you are using is not in the UnityEditor namespace. If it's just an Editor plugin, you can wrap it around UNITY_EDITOR .

#if UNITY_EDITOR
using UnityEditor;
#endif

But it's not an Editor plugin so that wound't work.

So which is the best strategy that I should apply to load my models at run time, outside the editor?

There are really two ways to load files in Unity

1 .AssetBundles(Recommended)

The best way is to use AssetBundles. Create a folder in the Assets folder and na e name is "StreamingAssets" . Create AssetBundles then put the AssetBundles there. You can use Unity's WWW API with Application.streamingAssetsPath as the path to load it.

public string filePath = System.IO.Path.Combine(Application.streamingAssetsPath, "MyFile");
public string result = "";
IEnumerator Example() {
    if (filePath.Contains("://")) 
    {
        WWW www = new WWW(filePath);
        yield return www;
        result = www.text;
    } else
        result = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(filePath);
}

2 .Resources folder

Create a folder named "Resources" then put all your files there. You can then load it with the Resources API. This post has more information about this method. I do think you should avoid using this method but it's really worth to be mentioned.

TextAsset txtAsset = (TextAsset)Resources.Load("textfile", typeof(TextAsset));
string tileFile = txtAsset.text;