Yes, it was requested by a sponsor.
This is absolutely true and it drives our decision making at all times! When it comes to the ability to manipulate existing textures and create new atlases (will be included in 1.4.2) it is something that has been requested many many times over the years. Examples:
- Modifying sprite atlas at runtime
- Atlas generation
- How would you go about adding Google Maps? - #8 by britzl
- Is it possible to build an atlas at runtime? (edit: or Tiling map)
The feature also goes hand in hand with other work such as the ability to trim transparent pixels and loading packed textures from for instance Texture Packer or using our own tools. We’re also working on multi paged atlases which is tangentially related to this work. Finally we also have multi texture atlases which is going to be helped by the work we’ve done now.