Assets & Scenes

Load textures, models, and scenes in Bevy - handles, asset states, and hot-reload workflows.

Recipe

fn setup(asset_server: Res<AssetServer>, mut commands: Commands) {
    let texture: Handle<Image> = asset_server.load("sprites/player.png");
    commands.spawn(Sprite::from_image(texture));
}

When to reach for this:

• Any game with art/audio not procedurally generated
• Level composition via scene files instead of code-only spawns
• Iterating on assets without restarting game (dev hot-reload)
• Separating content pipeline from Rust gameplay code

Working Example

use bevy::prelude::*;
 
fn main() {
    App::new()
        .add_plugins(DefaultPlugins)
        .add_systems(Startup, load_scene)
        .add_systems(Update, watch_loading)
        .run();
}
 
#[derive(Resource)]
struct LevelHandle(Handle<Scene>);
 
fn load_scene(mut commands: Commands, asset_server: Res<AssetServer>) {
    let scene = asset_server.load("scenes/level1.scn.ron");
    commands.insert_resource(LevelHandle(scene));
}
 
fn watch_loading(
    level: Res<LevelHandle>,
    asset_server: Res<AssetServer>,
    mut scenes: ResMut<Assets<Scene>>,
    mut done: Local<bool>,
    mut commands: Commands,
) {
    if *done {
        return;
    }
    match asset_server.load_state(&level.0) {
        bevy::asset::LoadState::Loaded => {
            if scenes.get(&level.0).is_some() {
                commands.spawn(DynamicSceneRoot(level.0.clone()));
                *done = true;
            }
        }
        bevy::asset::LoadState::Failed(err) => eprintln!("load failed: {err:?}"),
        _ => {}
    }
}

What this demonstrates:

• Scene handle stored as resource
• Polling LoadState before spawning DynamicSceneRoot
• Failure logging for missing assets

Deep Dive

How It Works

• AssetServer IO thread loads files into typed Assets<T> storages.
• Handle<T> UUID-like reference safe to clone and store on components.
• Scene files list reflected components to spawn entity tree.
• File watcher (dev) triggers reload when disk changes.

Folder Layout

Gotchas

• Wrong asset path case on Linux builds - works on macOS, fails in CI. Fix: consistent lowercase paths.
• Spawning before load completes - invisible entities. Fix: gate on LoadState::Loaded.
• Huge textures unoptimized - GPU memory blowup. Fix: compress, atlas, mipmaps.
• Non-reflected components in scenes - silently omitted. Fix: register Reflect on custom components.
• Hot-reload in release - unintended behavior. Fix: disable watcher in release builds.

Alternatives

FAQs

Related

• Bevy Engine - ECS spawning
• Performance for Games - texture budgets
• Game Dev Basics - sprite spawn example
• Physics & Audio - audio handles

Stack versions: This page was written for Rust 1.97.0 (edition 2024), Tokio 1.x, Axum 0.8, serde 1.0, sqlx 0.8, clap 4, and Polars 0.46+.