Unity Async Texture Importer
This is a faster alternative to Texture2D.LoadImage and , which can only be used on the main thread - and which will block the thread until it's done.
How to use
Create a coroutine, and from there do this:
TextureImporter importer = new TextureImporter();
yield return importer.ImportTexture(texPath, FREE_IMAGE_FORMAT.FIF_JPEG);
Texture2D tex = importer.texture;See the sample scene for an example.
What it does
The TextureImporter class has a public IEnumerator ("ImportTexture") that you can call/yield from a coroutine. It runs a task in a separate thread that loads the texture file, converts it to raw data and generates mipmaps. When the task is done, the IEnumerator will finally upload the raw data by calling Texture2D.LoadRawTextureData. Since the file reading, decompressing and mipmap generation is done in a separate thread, you will be able to load large textures without causing FPS lags/hiccups. I used FreeImage for the texture loading/conversion.
License
MIT License (See the "LICENSE" file)
Note: This project uses the FreeImage library. To use this project, you should include a copy of the FreeImage license (GPL or FIPL). See more info here: https://freeimage.sourceforge.io/license.html