2D Experimental Preview Release 2

We are excited to bring you the second release of the 2D Experimental Preview! The past couple of months we have been busy getting all the feedback processed and into the build. Experimental Preview 2 brings quite a few improvements and also exciting new things to try out.
I would like to thank all those that have been contributing in this forum to help shape the new 2D features. Your feedback is important and has been very helpful, so please keep up the great work!

Please note there are some changes that will break your Preview 1 projects. Please read the Breaking Changes section below.

Unity 2D Experimental Preview Release 2
What’s New!

• New: CompositeCollider2D component
  • Merges other 2D colliders together if set to do so, forming a composite shape based on these colliders.

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• New: TileMapCollider2D component
  • Generates 2D collider shapes for a Tile Map.
  • Note: Previous functionality for PolygonCollider2D for Tile Map has been removed. Please use this to generate 2D colliders for the Tile Map.

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• New: Sprite Atlas
  • A new asset that takes folder(s), texture(s) and individual sprite(s) as input, then pack all sprites in them into an atlas texture with the unified settings.
  • The new packing is parallelised, the time used to pack the similar amount of sprites compared to current Sprite Packer should be shorter.
  • Sprite packing with Packing Tag in texture is still available. Any texture with a packing tag will not be packed into the new Sprite Atlas even if they are included. Remove the packing tag to use the new system.
  • Use this script to convert all your existing packing tag to Sprite Atlas asset and have it automatically populated with folder/texture. Please backup your project before you run it for real.

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• New: Sprite Physics Shape Editor
  • Provides the ability to adjust sprite physics shape in the Sprite Editor Window.

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• New: Axis Distance Sort
  • Under Edit/Project Settings/Graphics
    • Set the Transparency Sort Mode
      • Default - Sorts based on the Camera mode.
      • Perspective - Sorts based on perspective view.
      • Orthographics - Sorts based on orthographic view.
      • Custom Axis - Sorts based on the given axis set in Transparency Sort Axis.
  • Set the Transparency Sort Axis
    • If the Transparency Sort Mode is set to Custom Axis, renderers in the scene view will be sorted based on the distance of this axis from the camera.

Improvements

• Improvement: Sorting Group
  • Sorting Group no longer break batches for other renderers

• Improvement: SpriteRenderer 9-slice Collider2D support
  • BoxCollider2D and PolygonCollider2D collision shape will readjust following 9-slice properties from SpriteRenderer when in Sliced/Tiled mode.
  • Supported Collider2Ds have a ‘Auto Tiling’ toggle to enable/disable collision shape automatic update.

• Improvement: Tile Map
  • Snapping of GameObjects to Grid
  • Hotkeys for Palette
    • B - Paint
    • U - Box Fill
    • I - Pick
    • D - Erase
    • G - Flood Fill
    • , (Comma) - Rotate Tile Left
    • . (Period) - Rotate Tile Right
    • Shift + , (Comma) - Flip Tile Vertical
      
    • Shift + . (Period) - Flip Tile Horizontal
  • Multilayer painting for Tile Map
  • Toggle for selecting Tile Asset from palette

Breaking Changes

• Tile Map
  • Tile Map APIs have been changed, please do update your existing scripts.
  • Tile Map APIs have been moved to its own namespace UnityEngine.TileMap.
  • VirtualTiles have been renamed to EditorPreviewTiles.
  • BaseTile has been renamed to TileBase.
  • TileFlags have been renamed.
    • OverrideColor -> LockColor
    • OverrideTransform -> LockTransform
    • OverrideSpawnGameObjectRuntimeOnly -> InstantiateGameObjectRuntimeOnly
    • OverrideAll -> LockAll
  • TileData
    • TileData.gameobject -> TileData.gameObject
  • TileAnimationData
    • TileAnimationData.animationTimeOffset -> TileAnimationData.animationStartTime
  • PolygonCollider2D no longer generates a collider shape for the TileMap. Please use the new TileMapCollider2D instead.

• 9-Slice
  • The internal data type that represents 9-slice properties in SpriteRenderer has changed. You will have to reapply your 9-slice properties again after upgrading to Preview 2.

Bugfixes

• Tile Map
  • Fixed crash when camera is set to perspective view and pulled back so that a large area is in view.
  • Fixed bug where paint mode is lost if editor is changed to full screen mode
  • Fixed bug where paint mode cannot be selected unless a Tile Map is selected if Palette is not docked.
  • Fixed error when dragging prefabs, materials or scripts over the Tile Map Palette
  • Fixed bug where Tile Map and instances of Tile Map prefabs does not update across playmode.

• Sorting Group
  • Transform gizmo is no longer stuck at (0, 0, 0) regardless of the position of the sorting group.

2D Experimental Preview Download Assistant
Please note that this is NOT the Alpha build. The version displayed is 5..5.0a6. This is because it is based on the latest code trunk in our repository and that is currently named 5.5a6.
This build is the 2D Experimental Preview 2 build. As we iterate through improvements, changes and fixes, we will release more previews.

Warning!!!
Project backward compatibility between Unity versions is NOT GUARANTEED. Always backup your project before upgrading. Preview features here are not production ready, please DO NOT use this build for your final production. Experimental features may be discontinued/dropped.
Download the build from here:
Windows Download Assistant
Mac Download Assistant

Demo Projects
The demos WILL ONLY work with the 2D Experimental Preview builds found here. Project backward compatibility between versions is not guaranteed.
Example Project 02

Quickstart Guide
A simple quickstart guide on how to use some of the new features
Google Doc