How-to Host Addressable Assets Remotely with the Azure Blob
Part 1 of 3: Create and set up an Azure blob for use with Unity3d
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Put everything else down and focus on implementing this if developing for Android or iOS.
The capability to host a project's content remotely is little less than magic. Speed up your games loading, testing, and build times. At the very same moment, free up space previously occupied by your assets! That’s just a few of the main advantages of hosting your content on an Azure Blob. The tutorial is intended to be effortless with step-by-step instructions clearly outlined and annotated. To keep this how-to focused I’ll be skipping addressables basics and how to create an Azure account. If you find yourself looking for additional assistance please reach out on Discord 👈.
Heavy concentration has been aimed at demystifying the process as a whole. Below is an overview of the tasks to be accomplished:
- Set up Azure Blob storage
- Update Addressable Asset Settings to build and load remotely
- Build the updated Addressable Assets data
- Add the built Addressables data into the Azure Blob
- Code for loading and creating remotely hosted assets
- Build within Unity and successfully deploy to a test device
Jumping to it go to Azure.com. Log in or create an account at this time. Now inside your account go to your Portal, the link is to the left of your Username. In your portal, the first thing to do is to create a Resource Group. Look directly under Azure Services for the Resource groups option. If not present use the search bar, type in resource group and press enter. In the new window click + Add to make a new group.
Give the resource group a name, under Project details → Resource group enter an identifying name.
Ex: I named my group: com.badgerdox.addressables
Leave all other settings default and create the group. To do this hit the blue button in the bottom left corner Review + create. The next page will validate the group again hit the blue Create button.
It may take a while for your new resource group to populate. If you wait longer than five minutes and do not see your resource group something is wrong. When successfully created it will be listed within the Resource Groups window.
Time to create a blob! Back on the landing page of your Azure portal look for Storage Accounts option under Account Services. On the next page choose + Add to start creation.
Hang in there, not much left in this section!
On the creation page look for project details → Subscription → Resource group. With the dropdown set the group to the one you made in the previous step. Then, draw your focus to the Instance details portion. The first field, Storage account name needs to be entered. Ex: addressablessample is the name I used.
After the name is accepted move a bit lower looking for the Account kind drop-down. You MUST set the king to BlobStorage, or Unity3D will not be able to connect to it successfully. Access tier selection is up to your discretion as neither affects Unity.
With that, the blob is ready to be created. Hit the blue Review + create button on the bottom left-hand of the window.
With your blob‘s setup and deployment finalized information Unity needs for cloud connection has been generated. In the blobs overview hit the blue Go to resources button. On the next page, under the search bar on the left side of the page look for a link that says Properties and click it.
Have something ready to paste text into for later use.
Copy and Paste the link found under Blob Services → Primary Blob Service Endpoint. Ex: my link was https://addressablessample.blob.core.windows.net/.
You crushed it! Enjoy part two, setting up Unity3D to connect with an Azure Blob
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