Load and unload assets with the Resources system

To load assets with the Resources system:

1. Create a new folder called Resources in your project, and add assets to it. Unity then makes these assets available even if they’re not directly referenced in a sceneA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info
   See in Glossary. Note: You can have multiple Resources folders located in different subfolders within your Assets folder, and packages can also contain Resources folders.
2. Whenever you want to load an asset from one of these folders, call Resources.Load in your code. Only assets in the Resources folder can be accessed in this way.

For example, you can apply the following script to load and apply a texture to it:

using UnityEngine;

public class LoadTexture : MonoBehaviour
{
    // Reference a material to apply the texture to
    public Renderer targetRenderer;

    void Start()
    {
        // Load a texture from the Textures folder inside the Resources folder
        Texture2D loadedTexture = Resources.Load<Texture2D>("Textures/MyTexture");

        if (loadedTexture != null)
        {
            // Apply the loaded texture to the material of the target renderer
            targetRenderer.material.mainTexture = loadedTexture;

            Debug.Log("Texture successfully loaded and applied.");
        }
        else
        {
            Debug.LogError("Failed to load texture from Resources.");
        }
    }
}

Unity stores all assets in the Resources folders and their dependencies in a file in the build output called resources.assets. If a scene in the build references an asset, Unity serializes that asset into a sharedAssets*.assets file instead.

Additional assets might end up in the resources.assets file if they’re dependencies. For example, a material in the Resources folder might reference a texture outside of the Resources folder. In that case the texture is also included in the resources.assets file, but isn’t available to load directly.

Unload assets

If you want to destroy objects that Resources.Load loaded before loading another scene, call Object.Destroy on them. To recover memory used by unreferenced objects, use Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets.

Additional resources

• Introduction to the Resources system
• Introduction to asset management
• Resources.Load API