Accessing the child sprites of a sprite sheet in unity?

Question

I have a spritesheet set up with the individual sprite regions named in unity. I haven't been able to find out how to access these sprites by name?

Answer 1

If you load your sprite sheet in programmatically:

private Sprite[] Sprites;

....

Sprites = Resources.LoadAll<Sprite>("SHEET NAME");

The Sprite object has a name property, which you can then use to retrieve a specific sprite by name:

public Sprite GetSpriteByName(string name)
{
    for (int i = 0; i < Sprites.length; i++)
    {
        if (Sprites[i].name == name)
            return Sprites[i];
    }
}

EDIT (alternative method)

You could store it in a Dictionary collection instead, which would provide you with a quicker lookup:

private void LoadDictionary() {
    Sprite[] SpritesData = Resources.LoadAll<Sprite>("SHEET NAME");
    Sprites = new Dictionary<string, Sprite>();

    for (int i = 0; i < SpritesData.Length; i++)
    {
        Sprites.Add(SpritesData[i].name, SpritesData[i]);
    }
}

public Sprite GetSpriteByName(string name) {
    if (Sprites.ContainsKey(name))
        return Sprites[name];
    else 
        return null;
}