AssetBundles are files which you can export from Unity to contain assets of your choice. These files use a proprietary compressed format and can be loaded on demand by your application. This allows you to stream in content, such as models, textures, audio clips, or even entire scenes separately from the scene in which they will be used. AssetBundles have been designed to simplify downloading content to your application. AssetBundles can contain any kind of asset type recognized by Unity, as determined by the filename extension. If you want to include files with custom binary data, they should have the extension ".bytes". Unity will import these files as TextAssets.
When working with AssetBundles, here's the typical workflow:
During development, the developer prepares AssetBundles and uploads them to a server.
Building and uploading asset bundles
At runtime, on the user's machine, the application will load AssetBundles on demand and operate individual assets within each AssetBundle as needed.
Downloading AssetBundles and loading assets from them
Please read this section of the documentation thoroughly to familiarize yourself with the workflow for using AssetBundles, discover the different features they provide and learn best practices that can save you time and effort during development.
See also:
Page last updated: 2013-04-23