Skip to main content

Decomposing a TileSet

Perhaps you have a TileSet that you bought on the Asset Store, Itch.io or somewhere like that. Often you need to paint more than one tile from such a set to create a complete visual object in the scene: a building might comprise a dozen or more tiles or something smaller like a sign might take two or three tiles.

If you’ve used the TileSet to create a Unity Palette, you can use the UTE or Painter’s Palette display to select a group in the palette and paint it – but you must recreate this selection every time (although 2023.X / Unity 6 versions include a “brush picks” overlay which improves the situation somewhat).

When you use the Painter’s built-in Palette display and select a group of tiles from a Palette, they comprise what’s called a “Multiple-Selection” and that’s shown as an eyedropper icon in the Clipboard.

It might not be obvious, but the Palette display is actually a Tilemap, so a Multiple Selection from a Palette is the same as a Multiple Selection from a Tilemap in the Scene View.

If you have a Multiple Selection, you might only need it for a short while. In Painter, you can save the Multiple Selection to Favorites, make a Bundle of the selection, or even create a single tile that will load the bundle when it is painted on a Tilemap.

Here’s a simple workflow to create Picks and save them in Bundles.

  • Examine a Palette in Painter with the Use Unity Palette option checkbox ON.
  • Drag-select a group of tiles.
  • The eyedropper image appears in the Clipboard.
  • Click the B button and follow the prompts.

If you don’t want to create a Bundle, you can always click F instead. That will preserve the Pick in Favorites, which is persistent between Unity Editor sessions. Pro tip: if you select the Pick from Favorites you can click B to Bundle it later!

In either case, an Icon is generated. (see: About the Icon).

The Bundle will be initially set up to be visible to Painter so that it appears in the list of Sources.

See “What’s a TpBundleTile?” to find out how to create a tile proxy for the Bundle.

Back to top