Instantiate prefab differences...

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Let's say I instantiate a prefab like this:

 GameObject obj = Instantiate(Resources.Load("MyPrefab"), pos, rotation) as GameObject;

Is there a difference at all from if I had a public GameObject variable in my class, and then in the editor dragged a "MyPrefab" prefab to it, and then in code did:

 public GameObject objToInstantiate; // set to "MyPrefab" object in editor
 
 ...
 GameObject obj = Instantiate(objToInstantiate, pos, rotation) as GameObject;

Thanks!

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Answer by Baste · Sep 27, 2014 at 08:03 AM

In efficiency - how much time it takes to make the thing - there shouldn't be too big a difference between the two methods.

The big downside with Resources.Load is that anything in the resources folder is included in your build. When you build your game, Unity grabs every object that's referenced in a scene, and only those objects. This means that say a material that's in your materials folder, but is never used, will not be included in your final game file (.exe or .app or whatever).

Stuff in the resources folder are the exception to this. As you can load those from script by giving the string path to the resource, Unity has no idea what parts of the Resources folder it should include or not, so it puts the entire folder in your build. So if you stop using an asset that you used to load from Resources, but forget to remove it from the folder, it will still be included in the final build.

The general advice is to avoid using Resources.Load. There's also some comments on the same thing in the official docs, I'd suggest you take a look at what Unity says there.

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fafase · Sep 27, 2014 at 08:44 AM 0

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Other downside of the Resources folder is you are tight to the path where you object is stored. If you change the path of the name you also need to change it in code. There are still possibility to load all object of type from an entire folder but all in all drag and drop makes it easy.

One convention we used is to make the reference private/protected and use the SerializeField attribute. This way you get the best out of Unity without breaking OOP principles.

buskamuza · Nov 26, 2015 at 02:55 AM 0

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How about memory usage in both cases?

Setting a prefab via Editor is more convenient than loading it from resources.

But what, if I need a prefab that may be used or may be not. And this prefab has a dependency on another prefab that possibly won't be used. And so on. Let's say I have a chain of 10 dependent prefabs: objA -> prefabB -> prefabC -> prefabD -> prefabE -> prefabF -> prefabG -> prefabH -> prefabI -> prefabJ. In case none of them will be used, the memory will be still allocated for these objects. But how much? What is prefab before it's instantiated? Is it the same as instantiated object and then I'll get whole chain of 10 prefab objects? Or is it something serialized and it does not load other objects it references to until it's instantiated?

Instantiate prefab differences...

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