Astra Project Organization

Table of Contents

• Plugin Paths
  • Important Locations
    • Managed Library
    • Native Libraries
    • Resources and Shaders
    • Vendor Libraries
    • Examples
• Namespaces
• Where are My Assets?

This guide will walk you through the organization of the Astra SDK project structure for the Unity environment. This will give you an overview of where to find files such as DLLs, shaders, and namespaces.

Plugin Paths

Astra will install into Assets/Astra it does not use any other folders in your project. It will create a database and log file (optional) based on your project's configuration. By default these will be created at temporary folders on your system so we encourage you to set them yourself Log Path and Db Path. You can create a configuration via the context menu Create/Astra/Config by right clicking your project folder.

Important Locations

Inside the Astra folder you will see:

• Managed
• Native
• Resources
• Vendors
• Examples

Managed Library

Your managed library is named Astra.Unity.dll and is located at Assets/Astra/Managed

Native Libraries

Your native (or unmanaged) libraries are located at Assets/Astra/Native/Plugins these will contain platform specific libraries, for example on windows you will find Assets/Astra/Native/Plugins/Win64/Astra.dll. If you have trouble building to a platform ensure the platform you're targeting is setup correctly for the environment.

Here you can see the macOS binary is enabled for both editor and standalone support for the macOS x64 environment

Currently Astra on Unity is supported on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.

Resources and Shaders

Shaders for Astra are located at Assets/Astra/Resources/Shaders. There are many shaders used by the Astra system, in addition there are often tuples of shaders for the legacy, URP, and HDRP render paths in Unity. Because Astra has advanced features required for shaders it you must be careful if you plan to modify these. There will be support in future versions to replace or inject your own shaders along with documentation on the standard for creating them.

Vendor Libraries

In addition to the Astra library itself we also have libraries for first and third party vendors at Assets/Astra/Vendors. These include:

• Datastructures.KDTree.dll - A KDTree implementation library
• Google.Protobuf.dll - A library for message serialization used by Astra
• Astra.Logger.dll - Our own library for managing the C# log entries

You can safely ignore the vendors folder unless you run into conflicts from your own project.

Examples

Various examples for using Astra can be found in the Assets/Astra/Examples folder. You are encouraged to check them out. There is a shared common config file which you will want to modify with your own configuration settings, it is located at: Assets/Astra/Examples/Common/Config/Astra.Config.json.

Namespaces

The Astra library always has the Astra namespace as a prefix, in addition there are several namespaces below the root used to help organize the library.

• Astra - Our root namespace, this contains many classes such as the job system, queue management, GUIDs, etc
• Astra.Asset - Used primarily for asset management such as search and components such as AvatarItem
• Astra.Core - Used mostly internally but misc other tools you will find inside here such as Decimation, in most cases you can ignore this.
• Astra.Eviction - Used internally to handle removal of assets when other assets are applied, safe to ignore
• Astra.FileFormats - Used to handle I/O operations such as installing MR files or exporting (eg: OBJ)
• Astra.Legacy - These are items scheduled for removal and in the process of being migrated, safe to ignore
• Astra.Messages - These are used for serialization and are sometimes used for lower level tooling, in most cases you will not directly use these
• Astra.Net - If you are querying network operations such as billing, products, etc you will use this
• Astra.Physics - This will be used in upcoming features to Astra for physics
• Astra.Serialization - Used for internal data structures such as serializable dictionaries, you're welcome to use these if they're of use to you
• Astra.Tools - Typically used for diagnostics
• Astra.Utils - There are many useful utility functions in here but they will be rarely used by you except possibly the FeatureDetection class
• McsSDK20 - Used in serialization of messages, this will eventually port over to Astra.Messages for consistency

Most of your work will happen in the Astra and Astra.Asset namespaces.

For a list of all namespaces and classes within please view the Namespaces documentation.

Where are My Assets?

Your assets do not exist as typical unity assets, instead they are automatically streamed down over the network into your database. Once local to your computer they are loaded into Unity procedurally through the Astra library. All assets (textures, meshes, rigs, morphables, etc) will be fully contained inside the database file (controlled by your project configuration).

To manage the list of assets that are available you will need to log into your admin portal provided at sign-up.