Fr

Unity is a powerful cross-platform development engine

that provides rich framework to create 2D and 3D apps
or games. Through Unity, users are able take master the
complexities of game development with ease, including
animations, physics, renderings, shaders, scripting and now,
Unity have released a new and advanced system to cope
with the UI demands for modern applications and games.
Unity 3D UI Essentials is a complete walk-through of the
new UI system in Unity V4 and beyond (including Unity 5).
This fast-paced practical tutorial provides you with in depth
details of the new UI controls and layouts that can be used
to create stunning and multiresolution UI.
Venture forth into the highly componentized and advanced
UI system, covering new features such as responsive
designs and layouts. Also you get to deep-dive into the
scripting side of the UI system as Unity has made the entire
framework open source, giving free access to the source
code of the new UI system to all developers.
So get ready for a wild ride into the new Unity UI system and
set your course for awesome!

Who this book is written for

Get to grips with the Legacy Unity GUI

fundamentals to better understand the
path forward
Explore the tools Unity introduced with the
new UI system such as the Rect Transform
layout tool

P U B L I S H I N G

pl

C o m m u n i t y

Work with the layout features and take

control in a multiresolution world
Build stunning UI within the 3D as well
as the traditional 2D world
Understand the new Unity Event System and
how it fits in to the new UI system and beyond

$ 44.99 US
27.99 UK

community experience distilled

Sa
m

Unwrap the new base Unity UI controls

and what makes them tick

Simon Jackson

If you have a good understanding of Unity's core functionality

and a decent grasp of C# scripting in Unity (although
not essential if you are just using the Editor with the new
UI), you'll be well placed to take advantage of the new UI
feature set

What you will learn from this book

Unity 3D UI Essentials

Unity 3D UI Essentials

ee

D i s t i l l e d

Unity 3D UI Essentials
Leverage the power of the new and improved UI system for Unity
to enhance your games and apps

Prices do not include

local sales tax or VAT
where applicable

Visit www.PacktPub.com for books, eBooks,

code, downloads, and PacktLib.

E x p e r i e n c e

Simon Jackson

In this package, you will find:

The author biography

A preview chapter from the book, Chapter 1 "Looking Back,
Looking Forward"
A synopsis of the books content
More information on Unity 3D UI Essentials

About the Author

Ever since my early years I have been a tinkerer, engineer, problem solver, and solution
gatherer. In short, I love to break things apart, figure out how they work, and then put
them back together, usually better than before.
I started way back when with my first computer, the Commodore Vic20. It was simple,
used a tape deck, and forced you to write programs in basic or assembly; they were fun
times. From there, I progressed through the ZX Spectrum +2 and the joyous days of
modern graphics, but with the 30 minute load times from a trusty tape deck. Games were
a passion of mine even then, which led to many requests for another gaming machine, but
Santa brought me an Amstrad 1640, my first PC. From there, my tinkering and building
exploded, and that machine ended up being a huge monstrosity with so many addons,
tweaks, and fixes; I was Frankenstein, and this PC became my own personal monster
crafted from so many parts. Good times.
This passion has led me down many paths, and I learned to help educate others on the tips
and tricks I learned along the way; these skills have equipped me well for the future.
Today I would class myself as a game development generalist. I work with many
different frameworks, each time digging down, ripping them apart, and then showing
whoever would listen through my blog, videos, and speaking events how to build
awesome frameworks and titles. This has been throughout many generations of C++,
MDX, XNA (what a breath of fresh air that was), MonoGame, Unity 3D, The Sunburn
Gaming Engine, HTML, and a bunch of other proprietary frameworks; I do them all. This
gives a very balanced view of how to build and manage many different types of
multiplatform titles.

I don't stop there, as I regularly contribute to the MonoGame project, adding new features
and new samples before publishing it on NuGet. I also have several of my own open
source projects and actively seek out any new and interesting ones to help with.
By day I am a lowly lead technical architect working in the healthcare software industry
seeking to improve patients' health and care through better software (a challenge to be
sure), but by night I truly soar! Building, tinkering, and educating whilst trying to push
game titles of my own. One day they will pay the bills, but until then I still lead a
double life.
More recently, I achieved the highly acclaimed reward of being a Microsoft MVP in the
ID@Xbox program, for my evangelizing efforts in the game development space. This
won't change much about me, but will give me additional tools to help game developers
out there.
Lastly, you should check out my previous title, which has been one of Packt's best sellers
since its release, especially if you want to learn more about Unity's 2D system. Check it
out here:
.
It truly has been a tormentous year but it looks to be getting better. Through
it all, my wife Caroline has been my tiller, keeping me straight and true
while I tend to my game development and writing efforts. Looking forward,
I'll likely be crafting more of my own experiences with my kids pitching in;
Caitlin, new to game development in school, being my sidekick, Jessica
adding her colorful artistic talent to the mix, and the boys (Alexander and
Nathan) no doubt trying to destroy my efforts through testing.
Additionally, a big thanks to my extended family (Mike and Marilyn) for
helping out with the kids and keeping the writing area a kids-free zone for a
few desperate hours. (It's amazing what a few hours respite can do.)
Also a big shout out to the PWSA (Prader-Willi Syndrome Association
) for their help and support with Alexander, plus the
Warrington Youth Club (
) for their exciting events to keep him
entertained, especially in his more trying times. On that last thread, a very
big thank you to Westland Drive respite (supported by Warrington council),
who give us peace of mind and a night off from time to time; Alexander
certainly loves his visits there.
Finally, thanks to the reviewers of this title (especially Simon W and
Andrew D who joined me from my previous book); they kept me grounded
and on target, although didn't help keeping the page count down. Thanks for
your support guys!

Unity 3D UI Essentials
A new era has dawned, and Unity Technologies have taken a big, bold step. Not only
have they delivered on some big promises for an all new and improved UI system for
Unity projects, but they have also made the source for the new UI completely open
source, giving everyday developers access to the inner workings of the new UI.
These are bold steps indeed. Many felt that the new UI wouldn't live up to the dream that
was sold, as it had been years since they announced it was coming. Delays and rewrites
made it look like it was never going to happen, leaving developers with either having to
live with the existing legacy GUI or pay for some of the more advanced GUI systems on
the asset store (such as NGUI).
Now, after a long and highly deliberated beta program, the new UI system is finally upon
us. In some areas, it meets our expectations; in some, it falls a bit short (however, this is
only the beginning). In other areas however, it has gone far beyond.
Throughout this title, we will peel back the layers of all this new technology to
understand what each component does, how it fits together, and how to use it to build a
fantastic new UI in our projects. Each chapter builds upon the last, to arm you (the
reader) with all the knowledge required to assemble your UI within your projects. You
will not just build on screen menus and options, but to embed UI elements within your
3D game world.
Not only have Unity released the new UI system, they have also given every developer
access to the source that builds the UI, allowing you to better understand how things are
built and enable you to extend the existing controls or even build your own. If you are
feeling adventurous, you can even submit fixes or new features back to Unity for them to
include within Unity itself.
Finally, we can now build what we want, how we want and best of all, it's completely
free and available with the Free license for Unity. All hail and rejoice!
Now what are you waiting for? Pack up your towel, brew a freshly hot cup of tea, crack
open this guide, and start exploring the all new universe of UI.

What This Book Covers

Chapter 1, Looking Back, Looking Forward, is a retrospective look at what Unity3D had
to offer prior to 4.6 and an overview of what 4.6 and beyond brings to the table, including
a high-level overview of all the new UI features.
Chapter 2, Building Layouts, covers the core elements of the new Unity UI system, the
Canvas and Rect Transforms. These elements are the foundations of the new Unity
UI system.

Chapter 3, Control, Control, You Must Learn Control, Unity UI introduces a heap-load
of new UI controls to suit just about any UI need, from buttons and checkboxes to entire
scrollable areas and layout masks. Here, we will delve deep into how to make the most of
all the controls available.
Chapter 4, Anchors Away, provides a detailed walk-through of how to make the most of
the new Unity UI anchor system and build responsive layouts/designs.
Chapter 5, Screen Space, World Space, and the Camera, Here we finally delve into one
of the most highly anticipated parts of the new UI system: the ability to easily build
perspective UI layouts and add UI elements as 3D objects within a scene.
Chapter 6, Working with the UI Source, looks at all the coding behind the UI framework
and explores the new Event System and UnityEvent frameworks. The chapter finishes
with a walk-through, the open source project for the UI system, allowing you to see just
about every line of code Unity has written for the new UI.
Appendix, The 3D Scene Sample, talks about a flashy 3D demo scene, which was
discussed in Chapter 5, Screen Space, World Space, and the Camera, to show off the UI.
Because this wasn't the focus of the book, it was added as an optional appendix that you
could follow if you wish. The instructions are also available online and as a
downloadable package to enable developers of all levels to make use of it.

Looking Back, Looking

Forward
The new Unity UI has long been sought by developers; it has been announced
and re-announced over several years, and now it is finally here. The new UI system
is truly awesome and (more importantly for a lot of developers on a shoestring
budget) it's free.
As we start to look forward to the new UI system, it is very important to understand
the legacy GUI system (which still exists for backwards compatibility) and all it has
to offer, so you can fully understand just how powerful and useful the new system is.
It's crucial to have this understanding, especially since most tutorials will still speak
of the legacy GUI system (so you know what on earth they are talking about).
With an understanding of the legacy system, you will then peer over the diving
board and walk through a 10,000-foot view of the new system, so you get a feel of
what to expect from the rest of this book.
The following is the list of topics that will be covered in this chapter:

A look back into what legacy Unity GUI is

Tips, tricks, and an understanding of legacy GUI and what it has done for us

A high level overview of the new UI features

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Downloading the example code

You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have
purchased from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you
purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.
com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.
Additionally, the author has provided a support forum for the book.
This forum provides direct support from the author on your queries and
any forthcoming announcements regarding the title. You can find this
forum at http://bit.ly/Unity3DUIEssentialsForums.

State of play
You may not expect it, but the legacy Unity GUI has evolved over time,
adding new features and improving performance. However, because it has
kept evolving based on the its original implementation, it has been hampered
with many constraints and the ever pressing need to remain backwards compatible
(just look at Windows, which even today has to cater for programs written in BASIC
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC)). Not to say the old system is bad, it's
just not as evolved as some of the newer features being added to the Unity 4.x and
Unity 5.x series, which are based on newer and more enhanced designs, and more
importantly, a new core.
The main drawback of the legacy GUI system is that it is only drawn in screen space
(drawn on the screen instead of within it) on top of any 3D elements or drawing in
your scenes. This is fine if you want menus or overlays in your title but if you want
to integrate it further within your 3D scene, then it is a lot more difficult.
For more information about world space and screen space, see
this Unity Answers article (http://answers.unity3d.com/
questions/256817/about-world-space-and-localspace.html).

So before we can understand how good the new system is, we first need to get to
grips with where we are coming from. (If you are already familiar with the legacy
GUI system, feel free to skip over this section.)

[8]

Chapter 1

A point of reference
Throughout this book, we will refer to the legacy GUI simply as GUI.
When we talk about the new system, it will be referred to as UI or
Unity UI, just so you don't get mixed-up when reading.
When looking around the Web (or even in the Unity support forums),
you may hear about or see references to uGUI, which was the
development codename for the new Unity UI system.

GUI controls
The legacy GUI controls provide basic and stylized controls for use in your titles.
All legacy GUI controls are drawn during the GUI rendering phase from the built-in
OnGUI method. In the sample that accompanies this title, there are examples of all the
controls in the Assets\BasicGUI.cs script.
For GUI controls to function, a camera in the scene must have the
GUILayer component attached to it. It is there by default on any Camera
in a scene, so for most of the time you won't notice it. However, if you
have removed it, then you will have to add it back for GUI to work.
The component is just the hook for the OnGUI delegate handler, to
ensure it has called each frame.

Like the Update method in scripts, the OnGUI method can be called
several times per frame if rendering is slowing things down. Keep this
in mind when building your own legacy GUI scripts.

The controls that are available in the legacy GUI are:

Label
Texture
Button
Text fields (single/multiline and password variant)
Box
Toolbars
Sliders
ScrollView
Window
[9]

Looking Back, Looking Forward

So let's go through them in more detail:

All the following code is implemented in the sample project in the
basic GUI script located in the Assets\Scripts folder of the
downloadable code.
To experiment yourself, create a new project, scene, and script,
placing the code for each control in the script and attach the
script to the camera (by dragging it from the project view on to
the Main Camera GameObject in the scene hierarchy). You can
then either run the project or adorn the class in the script with the
[ExecuteInEditMode] attribute to see it in the game view.

The Label control

Most GUI systems start with a Label control; this simply provides a stylized control
to display read-only text on the screen, it is initiated by including the following
OnGUI method in your script:
void OnGUI() {
GUI.Label(new Rect(25, 15, 100, 30), "Label");
}

This results in the following on-screen display:

The Label control supports altering its font settings through the use of the guiText
GameObject property (guiText.font) or GUIStyles. (See the following section on
GUIStyles for more detail.)
To set guiText.font in your script, you would simply apply the
following in your script, either in the Awake/Start functions or
before drawing the next section of text you want drawn in another font:
public Font myFont = new Font("arial");
guiText.font = myFont;

You can also set the myFont property in Inspector using an

imported font.

The Label control forms the basis for all controls to display text, and as such,
all other controls inherit from it and have the same behaviors for styling the
displayed text.
[ 10 ]

Chapter 1

The Label control also supports using a Texture for its contents, but not both text
and a texture at the same time. However, you can layer Labels and other controls
on top of each other to achieve the same effect (controls are drawn implicitly in the
order they are called), for example:
public Texture2D myTexture;
void Start() {
myTexture = new Texture2D(125, 15);
}
void OnGUI() {
//Draw a texture
GUI.Label(new Rect(125, 15, 100, 30), myTexture);
//Draw some text on top of the texture using a label
GUI.Label(new Rect(125, 15, 100, 30), "Textoverlay");
}

You can override the order in which controls are drawn by setting
GUI.depth = /*<depth number>*/; in between calls; however,
I would advise against this unless you have a desperate need.

The texture will then be drawn to fit the dimensions of the Label field, By default
it scales on the shortest dimension appropriately. This too can be altered using
GUIStyle to alter the fixed width and height or even its stretch characteristics.
GUIStyles and GUISkins are explained in the later GUI styles
and skins section.

Texture drawing
Not specifically a control in itself, the GUI framework also gives you the ability
to simply draw a Texture to the screen Granted there is little difference to using
DrawTexture function instead of a Label with a texture or any other control. (Just
another facet of the evolution of the legacy GUI). This is, in effect, the same as the
previous Label control but instead of text it only draws a texture, for example:
public Texture2D myTexture;
void Start() {

[ 11 ]

Looking Back, Looking Forward

myTexture = new Texture2D(125, 15);
}
void OnGUI() {
GUI.DrawTexture(new Rect(325, 15, 100, 15), myTexture);
}

Note that in all the examples providing a Texture, I have provided a

basic template to initialize an empty texture. In reality, you would be
assigning a proper texture to be drawn.

You can also provide scaling and alpha blending values when drawing the texture to
make it better fit in the scene, including the ability to control the aspect ratio that the
texture is drawn in.
A warning though, when you scale the image, it affects the
rendering properties for that image under the legacy GUI system.
Scaling the image can also affect its drawn position. You may have
to offset the position it is drawn at sometimes.

For example:
public Texture2D myTexture;
void Start() {
myTexture = new Texture2D(125, 15);
}
void OnGUI() {
GUI.DrawTexture(new Rect(325, 15, 100, 15), myTexture,
ScaleMode.ScaleToFit,true,0.5f);
}

This will do its best to draw the source texture with in the drawn area with alpha
blending (true) and an aspect ratio of 0.5. Feel free to play with these settings
to get your desired effect.
This is useful in certain scenarios in your game when you want a simple way to
draw a full screen image on the screen on top of all the 3D/2D elements, such as
pause or splash screen. However, like the Label control, it does not receive any
input events (see the Button control for that).

[ 12 ]

Chapter 1

There is also a variant of the DrawTexture function called

DrawTextureWithTexCoords. This allows you to not only pick where you want the
texture drawn on to the screen, but also from which part of the source texture you
want to draw, for example:
public Texture2D myTexture;
void Start() {
myTexture = new Texture2D(125, 15);
}
void OnGUI() {
GUI.DrawTextureWithTexCoords (new Rect(325, 15, 100, 15),
myTexture ,
new Rect(10, 10, 50, 5));
}

This will pick a region from the source texture (myTexture) 50 pixels wide by
5 pixels high starting from position 10, 10 on the texture. It will then draw this to
the Rect region specified.
However, the DrawTextureWithTexCoords function cannot perform
scaling, it can only perform alpha blending! It will simply draw to fit
the selected texture region to the size specified in the initial Rect.
DrawTextureWithTexCoords has also been used to draw individual
sprites using the legacy GUI, which has a notion of what a sprite is.

The Button control

Unity also provides a Button control, which comes in two variants. The basic
Button control which only supports a single click, whereas RepeatButton supports
holding down the button.
They are both instantiated the same way by using an if statement to capture
when the button is clicked, as shown in the following script:
void OnGUI() {
if (GUI.Button(new Rect(25, 40, 120, 30), "Button"))
{
//The button has clicked, holding does nothing
}
if (GUI.RepeatButton(new Rect(170, 40, 170, 30),
"RepeatButton"))
{
//The button has been clicked or is held down
}
}
[ 13 ]

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Each will result in a simple button on screen as follows:

The controls also support using a Texture for the button content as well by providing
a texture value for the second parameter as follows:
public Texture2D myTexture;
void Start() {
myTexture = new Texture2D(125, 15);
}
void OnGUI() {
if (GUI.Button(new Rect(25, 40, 120, 30), myTexture))
{ }
}

Like the Label, the font of the text can be altered using GUIStyle or by setting the
guiText property of the GameObject. It also supports using textures in the same
way as the Label. The easiest way to look at this control is that it is a Label that
can be clicked.

The Text control

Just as there is a need to display text, there is also a need for a user to be able to enter
text, and the legacy GUI provides the following controls to do just that:
Control

Description

TextField

This is a basic text box, it supports a single line of text, no new

lines (although, if the text contains end of line characters, it will
draw the extra lines down).

TextArea

This is an extension of TextField that supports entering of

multiple lines of text; new lines will be added when the user
hits the enter key.

PasswordField

This is a variant of TextField; however, it won't display

the value entered, it will replace each character with a
replacement character.
Note, the password itself is still stored in text form and if you are
storing users' passwords, you should encrypt/decrypt the actual
password when using it. Never store characters in plain text.

[ 14 ]

Chapter 1

Using the TextField control is simple, as it returns the final state of the value that has
been entered and you have to pass that same variable as a parameter for the current
text to be displayed. To use the controls, you apply them in script as follows:
string textString1 = "Some text here";
string textString2 = "Some more text here";
string textString3 = "Even more text here";
void OnGUI() {
textString = GUI.TextField(new Rect(25, 100, 100, 30),
textString1);
textString = GUI.TextArea(new Rect(150, 100, 200, 75),
textString2);
textString = GUI.PasswordField(new Rect(375, 100, 90, 30),
textString3, '*');
}

A note about strings in Unity scripts

Strings are immutable. Every time you change their value they create a
new string in memory by having the textString variable declared at
the class level it is a lot more memory efficient.
If you declare the textString variable in the OnGUI method,
it will generate garbage (wasted memory) in each frame.
Worth keeping in mind.

When displayed, the textbox by default looks like this:

As with the Label and Button controls, the font of the text displayed can be altered
using either a GUIStyle or guiText GameObject property.
Note that text will overflow within the field if it is too large for
the display area, but it will not be drawn outside the TextField
dimensions. The same goes for multiple lines.

[ 15 ]

Looking Back, Looking Forward

The Box control

In the midst of all the controls is a generic purpose control that seemingly
can be used for a variety of purposes. Generally, it's used for drawing a
background/shaded area behind all other controls.
The Box control implements most of the features mentioned in the controls above
controls (Label, Texture, and Text) in a single control with the same styling and
layout options. It also supports text and images as the other controls do.
You can draw it with its own content as follows:
void OnGUI() {
GUI.Box (new Rect (350, 350, 100, 130), "Settings");
}

This gives you the following result:

Alternatively, you can use it to decorate the background of other controls,

for example:
private string textString = "Some text here";
void OnGUI() {
GUI.Box (new Rect (350, 350, 100, 130), "Settings");
GUI.Label(new Rect(360, 370, 80, 30), "Label");
textString = GUI.TextField(new Rect(360, 400, 80, 30),
textString);
if (GUI.Button (new Rect (360, 440, 80, 30), "Button")) {}
}

Note that using the Box control does not affect any controls you draw
upon it. It is drawn as a completely separate control. This statement
will be made clearer when you look at the Layout controls later in
this chapter.

[ 16 ]

Chapter 1

The example will draw the box background and the Label, Text, and Button controls
on top of the box area and looks like this:

The box control can be useful to highlight groups of controls or providing a simple
background (alternatively, you can use an image instead of just text and color).
As with the other controls, the Box control supports styling using GUIStyle.

The Toggle/checkbox control

If checking on / checking off is your thing, then the legacy GUI also has a checkbox
control for you, useful for those times when you need to visualize the on/off state
of an option.
Like the TextField control, you pass the variable that manages Togglestate as
a parameter and it returns the new value (if it changes), so it is applied in code
as follows:
bool blnToggleState = false;
void OnGUI() {
blnToggleState = GUI.Toggle(new Rect(25, 150, 250, 30),
blnToggleState, "Toggle");
}

This results in the following on-screen result:

As with the Label and Button controls, the font of the text displayed can be altered
using either a GUIStyle or guiText GameObject property.

[ 17 ]

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Toolbar panels
The basic GUI controls also come with some very basic automatic layout panels:
the first handles an arrangement of buttons, however these buttons are grouped
and only one can be selected at a time.
As with other controls, the style of the button can be altered using a GUIStyles
definition, including fixing the width of the buttons and spacing.
There are two layout options available, these are:

The Toolbar control

The Selection grid control

The Toolbar control

The Toolbar control arranges buttons in a horizontal pattern (vertical is
not supported).
Note that it is possible to fake a vertical toolbar by using a selection
grid with just one item per row. See the Selection grid section later
in this chapter for more details.

As with other controls, the Toolbar returns the index of the currently selected button
in the toolbar. The buttons are also the same as the base button control so it also
offers options to support either text or images for the button content.
The RepeatButton control however is not supported.

To implement the toolbar, you specify an array of the content you wish to display in
each button and the integer value that controls the selected button, as follows:
private int toolbarInt;
private string[] toolbarStrings ;
Void Start() {
toolbarInt = 0;
toolbarStrings = { "Toolbar1", "Toolbar2", "Toolbar3" };
}
void OnGUI() {
toolbarInt = GUI.Toolbar(new Rect(25, 200, 200, 30),
toolbarInt, toolbarStrings);
}
[ 18 ]

Chapter 1

The main difference between the preceding controls is that you have to pass the
currently selected index value in to the control and it then returns the new value.
The Toolbar when drawn looks as follows:

As stated, you can also pass an array of textures as well and they will be displayed
instead of the text content.

The SelectionGrid control

The SelectionGrid control is a customization of the previous standard Toolbar
control, it is able to arrange the buttons in a grid layout and resize the buttons
appropriately to fill the target area.
In code, SelectionGrid is used in a very similar format to the Toolbar code shown
previously, for example:
private int selectionGridInt ;
private string[] selectionStrings;
Void Start() {
selectionGridInt = 0;
selectionStrings = { "Grid 1", "Grid 2", "Grid 3", "Grid 4" };
}
void OnGUI() {
selectionGridInt = GUI.SelectionGrid(
new Rect(250, 200, 200, 60), selectionGridInt, selectionStrings, 2);
}

The main difference between SelectionGrid and Toolbar in code is that with
SelectionGrid you can specify the number of items in a single row and the control will
automatically lay out the buttons accordingly (unless overridden using GUIStyle).
The preceding code will result in the following layout:

On their own, they provide a little more flexibility than just using buttons alone.
[ 19 ]

Looking Back, Looking Forward

The Slider/Scrollbar controls

When you need to control a range in your games. GUI or add a handle to control
moving properties between two values, like moving an object around in your scene,
this is where the Slider and Scrollbar controls come in. They provide two similar
out-of-the-box implementations that give a scrollable region and a handle to control
the value behind the control.
Here, they are presented side by side:

The slimmer Slider and chunkier Scrollbar controls can both work in either
horizontal or vertical modes and have presets for the minimum and maximum
values allowed.

Slider control code

In code, the Slider control code is represented as follows:
private float fltSliderValue = 0.5f;
void OnGUI() {
fltSliderValue = GUI.HorizontalSlider(new Rect(25, 250, 100,30),
fltSliderValue, 0.0f, 10.0f);
fltSliderValue = GUI.VerticalSlider(new Rect(150, 250, 25, 50),
fltSliderValue, 10.0f, 0.0f);
}

Scrollbar control code

In code, the Scrollbar control code is represented as follows:
private float fltScrollerValue = 0.5f;
void OnGUI() {
fltScrollerValue = GUI.HorizontalScrollbar(new Rect(25, 285,
100, 30), fltScrollerValue, 1.0f, 0.0f, 10.0f);
fltScrollerValue = GUI.VerticalScrollbar(new Rect(200, 250, 25,
50), fltScrollerValue, 1.0f, 10.0f, 0.0f);
}

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Chapter 1

Like Toolbar and SelectionGrid, you are required to pass in the current value and
it will return the updated value. However, unlike all the other controls, you actually
have two style points, so you can style the bar and the handle separately, giving you
a little more freedom and control over the look and feel of the sliders.
Normally, you would only use the Slider control; The main reason the Scrollbar is
available is that it forms the basis for the next control, the ScrollView control.

The ScrollView control

The last of the displayable controls is the ScrollView control, which gives you
masking abilities over GUI elements with optional horizontal and vertical Scrollbars.
Simply put, it allows you to define an area larger for controls behind a smaller
window on the screen, for example:

Example list implementation using a ScrollView control

Here we have a list that has many items that go beyond the drawable area of the
ScrollView control. We then have the two scrollbars to move the content of the
scroll viewer up/down and left/right to change the view. The background content
is hidden behind a viewable mask that is the width and height of the ScrollView
control's main window.
Styling the control is a little different as there is no base style for it; it relies on
the currently set default GUISkin (see the following GUIStyles section). You can
however set separate GUIStyles for each of the sliders but only over the whole
slider, not its individual parts (bar and handle). If you don't specify styles for each
slider, it will also revert to the base GUIStyle.

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Looking Back, Looking Forward

Implementing a ScrollView is fairly easy, for example:

1. Define the visible area along with a virtual background layer where the
controls will be drawn using a BeginScrollView function.
2. Draw your controls in the virtual area. Any GUI drawing between the
ScrollView calls is drawn within the scroll area.
Note that 0,0 in the ScrollView is from the top-left of the ScrollView
area and not the top-left-hand corner of the screen.

3. Complete it by closing the control with the EndScrollView function. For

example, the previous example view was created with the following code:
private Vector2 scrollPosition = Vector2.zero;
private bool blnToggleState = false;
void OnGUI()
{
scrollPosition = GUI.BeginScrollView(
new Rect(25, 325, 300, 200),
scrollPosition,
new Rect(0, 0, 400, 400));
for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++)
{
//Add new line items to the background
addScrollViewListItem(i, "I'm listItem number " + i);
}
GUI.EndScrollView();
}
//Simple function to draw each list item, a label and checkbox
void addScrollViewListItem(int i, string strItemName)
{
GUI.Label(new Rect(25, 25 + (i * 25), 150, 25), strItemName);
blnToggleState = GUI.Toggle(
new Rect(175, 25 + (i * 25), 100, 25),
blnToggleState, "");
}

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Chapter 1

In this code, we define a simple function (addScrollViewListItem) to draw a list

item (consisting of a label and checkbox). We then begin the ScrollView control by
passing the visible area (the first Rect parameter), the starting scroll position, and
finally the virtual area behind the control (the second Rect parameter). Then we
use that to draw 20 list items inside the virtual area of the ScrollView control
using our helper function before finishing off and closing the control with the
EndScrollView command.

If you want to, you can also nest ScrollView controls within each other.

The ScrollView control also has some actions to control its use like the ScrollTo
command. This command will move the visible area to the coordinates of the virtual
layer, bringing it into focus. (The coordinates for this are based on the top-left
position of the virtual layer; 0,0 being top-left.)
To use the ScrollTo function on ScrollView, you must use it within the Begin and
End ScrollView commands. For example, we can add a button in ScrollView to
jump to the top-left of the virtual area, for example:
public Vector2 scrollPosition = Vector2.zero;
void OnGUI()
{
scrollPosition = GUI.BeginScrollView(
new Rect(10, 10, 100, 50),
scrollPosition,
new Rect(0, 0, 220, 10));
if (GUI.Button(new Rect(120, 0, 100, 20), "Go to Top Left"))
GUI.ScrollTo(new Rect(0, 0, 100, 20));
GUI.EndScrollView();
}

You can also additionally turn on/off the sliders on either side of the control by
specifying the BeginScrollView statement using the alwayShowHorizontal and
alwayShowVertical properties; these are highlighted here in an updated
GUI.BeginScrollView call:
Vector2 scrollPosition = Vector2.zero;
bool ShowVertical = false; // turn off vertical scrollbar

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Looking Back, Looking Forward

bool ShowHorizontal = false; // turn off horizontal scrollbar
void OnGUI() {
scrollPosition = GUI.BeginScrollView(
new Rect(25, 325, 300, 200),
scrollPosition,
new Rect(0, 0, 400, 400),
ShowHorizontal,
ShowVertical);
GUI.EndScrollView ();
}

Rich Text Formatting

Now having just plain text everywhere would not look that great and would likely
force developers to create images for all the text on their screens (granted a fair
few still do so for effect). However, Unity does provide a way to enable richer text
display using a style akin to HTML wherever you specify text on a control (only for
label and display purposes; getting it to work with input fields is not recommended).
In this HTML style of writing text, we have the following tags we can use to liven up
the text displayed.

<b></b>
This gives text a Bold format, for example:
The <b>quick</b> brown <b>Fox</b> jumped over the <b>lazy Frog</b>

This would result in:

The quick brown Fox jumped over the lazy Frog

<i></i>
Using this tag will give text an Italic format, for example:
The <b><i>quick</i></b> brown <b>Fox</b><i>jumped</i> over the
<b>lazy Frog</b>

This would result in:

The quick brown Fox jumped over the lazy Frog

<size></size>
As you can probably guess, this tag will alter the Size of the text it surrounds.
For reference, the default size for the font is set by the font itself.
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Chapter 1

For example:
The <b><i>quick</i></b> <size=50>brown <b>Fox</b></size> <i>jumped</
i> over the <b>lazy Frog</b>

This would result in:

The quick

brown Fox

jumped over the lazy Frog

<color></color>
Lastly, you can specify different colors for text surrounded by the Color tag.
The color itself is denoted using its 8-digit RGBA hex value, for example:
The <b><i>quick</i></b> <size=50><color=#a52a2aff>brown</color>
<b>Fox</b></size> <i>jumped</i> over the <b>lazy Frog</b>

Note that the color is defined using normal RGBA color space
notation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGBA_color_
space) in hexadecimal form with two characters per color, for
example, RRGGBBAA. Although the color property does also
support the shorter RGB color space, which is the same notation
but without the A (Alpha) component, for example,. RRGGBB

The preceding code would result in:

The quick

brown Fox

jumped over the lazy Frog

(If you are reading this in print, the previous word brown is in the color brown.)
You can also use a color name to reference it but the pallet is quite
limited; for more details, see the Rich Text manual reference page at
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/StyledText.html.

For text meshes, there are two additional tags:

<material></material>
<quad></quad>

These only apply when associated to an existing mesh. The material is one of the
materials assigned to the mesh, which is accessed using the mesh index number
(the array of materials applied to the mesh). When applied to a quad, you can also
specify a size, position (x, y), width, and height to the text.
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Looking Back, Looking Forward

The text mesh isn't well documented and is only here for reference;
as we delve deeper into the new UI system, we will find much better
ways of achieving this.

Common control features

The legacy GUI system does also have some features for controlling flow, control
selection, and targeted behavior. When it was introduced in Unity V2, it was a huge
step up from the previous component-based system.

Grouping controls
The legacy GUI allow you to group controls together on the screen, making all
positions for the group relative to the group's position. This means that if you started
a group at position X 50 and Y 50, then all child control positions within the group
would start at 50,50 when they define their position as 0,0.
Like the ScrollView control, each group has a beginning and an end to define the
scope of all the controls within the group, for example:
void OnGUI() {
//Start a group at position 50, 50. 150 width and 60 height
GUI.BeginGroup(new Rect (50,50,150,60));
//Draw a label with a 10, 10 offset in the group
GUI.Label(new Rect (10, 10, 100, 30), "Label in a Group");
GUI.EndGroup();
}

Here the label is drawn within the group bounds, and as the group starts at X 50,
the Labels screen position will be at X 60 (50 + 10). Anything positioned or
overflowing the group's bounds will not be drawn.
The group, like other controls, can also specify content within the group as text or a
texture with appropriate GUIStyles.
What is odd is that unlike the rest of the controls, if you specify text
content in the function, the default color of text is white, whereas if you
specify text in the content parameter for the BeginGroup function, the
text in the group is black by default. It's also left justified instead
of centered.
Additionally, by default the group does not support Rich Text
Formatting unlike the other controls, so you will need to apply
GUIStyle to change that.
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Chapter 1

Naming controls
With each control that you implement through script, you can name them as you
place them; this is essential if you want to control flow and access to each field from
the keyboard or to derive logic based on the currently selected/focused control.
Now unlike most other Unity functionality, you cannot directly name controls,
there is no Name field on the properties of the controls as they are just commands
to the GUI system to draw things to the screen, kind of like a rendering pipeline.
So to name GUI controls in Unity, we simply need to tell the GUI system that the
next control we are going to draw has a name, as follows:
string login = "Would you like to play a game?";
void OnGUI() {
GUI.SetNextControlName("MyAwesomeField");
login = GUI.TextField(new Rect(10, 10, 200, 20), login);
}

Getting in focus
With names defined on controls, you could then define which control you were
focusing on. To focus on a specific control, you would simply need to call:
GUI.FocusControl("MyAwesomeField");

This would then change the user's input focus or selection to the specific GUI control
with that name.
Once you have a control in focus, you then discover the name of the specific control
in focus by calling:
string selectedControl = GUI.GetNameOfFocusedControl();

If the control in focus has a name, it will return the name you set for that control.
If no control is in focus or the control in focus has no name, it will return an
empty string.

The logon example

As an example of using the previous naming and focus capabilities, you can
build a simple logon GUI for a user to enter with validation behavior and some
usability features.
To demonstrate, we will create a user registration form where the user can enter a
username and password to register with your game. The password however will have
to be more than six characters long for security reasons (no weak passwords here).
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Looking Back, Looking Forward

To start, create a new script called IntermediateGUI in your project (the full sample
can be found in the project available with this book in the code download) and
replace its contents with the following:
using UnityEngine;
[ExecuteInEditMode]
public class IntermediateGUI : MonoBehaviour {
public string username = "Enter username";
public string password = "Enter password";
private bool passwordInError = false;
private string passwordErrorMessage =
"<color=red>Password too short</color>";
}

This gives a basic class with some of the parameters you might expect in a logon
or registration form.
To this we'll add a simple function to validate the password entered to ensure it
meets our stringent security policy:
void CheckUserPasswordAndRegister()
{
if (password.Length < 6)
{
//If the password is not long enough, mark it in error
//and focus on the password field
passwordInError = true;
GUI.FocusControl("PasswordField");
} else
{
passwordInError = false;
GUI.FocusControl("");
//Register User
}
}

With that in place, now we can add our GUI controls:

void OnGUI() {
//A tidy group for our fields and a box to decorate it
GUI.BeginGroup(new Rect(Screen.width / 2 - 75,
Screen.height / 2 - 80, 150,160));
GUI.Box(new Rect(0,0,150,160), "User registration form");

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Chapter 1
GUI.SetNextControlName("UsernameField");
username = GUI.TextField(new Rect(10, 40, 130, 20), username);
GUI.SetNextControlName("PasswordField");
password = GUI.PasswordField(new Rect(10, 70, 130, 20),
password,'*');
if (passwordInError)
{
GUI.Label (new Rect (10, 100, 200, 20),
passwordErrorMessage);
}
if (Event.current.isKey &&
Event.current.keyCode == KeyCode.Return &&
GUI.GetNameOfFocusedControl() == "PasswordField")
{
CheckUserPasswordAndRegister();
}
if (GUI.Button(new Rect(80, 130, 65, 20), "Register"))
{
CheckUserPasswordAndRegister();
}
GUI.EndGroup();
}

Note that the Event keyword here relates to the legacy GUI event
system for handling user input. See the Event section later in this
chapter for more information.
This is NOT to be confused with the UnityEvent system introduced
with the new UI system.

These results are shown in the following GUI screen:

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Looking Back, Looking Forward

In this example, we draw a box, a text field, and a password field together with a
simple button within a group, which is then centered on the screen.
We check whether the user hits the Enter key and whether they are on the password
field (checked using the GUI.GetNameOfFocusedControl() function) and we try to
register them. The same happens if the user clicks on the Register button.
If the user's password is longer than six characters, then they are registered; if not,
then the passwordInError flag is set to True, which causes the additional label to
be drawn, this then warns the user that their password could be broken easily by
a 6-year-old.
Don't forget to add the IntermediateGUI script to an active
GameObject in a scene or Main Camera to see the result!

Tooltips
Each of the GUI controls can also have a tooltip associated with it to display some
additional text when it is either in focus or the mouse is hovering over the control.
Adding a tooltip is simple; you just need to replace the content of the control when it
is being drawn using the GUIContent class. For example, we can update the Register
button in the previous script as follows:
if (GUI.Button(new Rect(80, 130, 65, 20),
new GUIContent("Register", "My Tooltip")))
{
CheckUserPasswordAndRegister();
}

With the tooltip defined, we just then need to display the current tooltip somewhere
on the screen, usually as a label, but it can be any control that can display text (input
fields are not recommended however), so add the following after the button block
but before EndGroup():
GUI.Label (new Rect (10, 120, 65, 20), GUI.tooltip);

This simply gets the content of the current tooltip in focus and returns the tooltip text
for that control.
GUIContent also has several other options for displaying text and
texture variants, so it's worth checking out some more.

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Chapter 1

The Window control

The last weapon in the legacy GUI arsenal is the Window control. As the name
suggests, this defines a separate drawable window for your controls.
The window behavior is similar to ScrollView; however, it is
just one layer. Any controls drawn outside the bounds of the
window are simply not drawn.

But there is nothing to stop you using a ScrollView control

inside a Window to achieve the same thing however.

With this separate Window, we can control many things, including:

The modal nature of the Window

Modal means that this window is the only one you can control;
non-modal means it is a side-by-side window

The drag state of Window; as in, the window can be dragged by holding
on with a mouse or touch

The draw order of each Window; this allows sorting of draw windows on
top of each other

The specific Window in focus, if there are multiple side-by-side windows

or a modal window

This opens lots of possibilities with a GUI Window.

The full Window example can be found in the BasicGUI script in
the sample project, displaying all the same controls as before but
within a single separate Window control.

To create a Window control, you first need to define a new method callback for the
Window using the following signature:
void DoMyWindow(int windowID)
{
}

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Looking Back, Looking Forward

This method is where you will add all your GUI code using the previous examples;
each control is positioned is based off the top-left position of the window when it is
displayed (same as the Group and ScrollView controls described earlier).
Additionally, you can specify any of the previous options for the window,
for example:
void DoMyWindow(int windowID)
{
GUI.Label(new Rect(25, 15, 100, 30), "Label");
// Make the window Draggable
GUI.DragWindow();
}

With your Window method in place, you just need to call the GUI.Window function
to open it along with the property to track the Window's location:
private Rect rctWindow1;
void OnGUI()
{
Rect rctWindow1;
rctWindow1 = GUI.Window(0,
rctWindow1,
DoMyWindow,
"Controls Window");
}

This calls Window control into view using:

An ID for the window

The Rect position for where Window will open

The delegate method for the GUI contents of Window

A name/title for the window

If you want a modal window, then you would need to instantiate the window with
the GUI.ModalWindow function instead of the Window function:
rctWindow1 = GUI.ModalWindow(0, rctWindow1, DoMyWindow, "Modal
Controls Window");

If we take all the controls together (that we have created so far in this chapter),
it would create a Window view, as shown in the following screenshot:
For a complete end-to-end example, please see the code download
package, which has all this defined.

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Chapter 1

GUI styles and skins

Recognizing that not everyone likes plain backgrounds and the same font
throughout their projects, Unity provided options to define a style for the layout
and general look and feel of the legacy GUI system, these are defined as GUIStyles.
These styles can either be applied globally using a GUISkin
(see GUISkin in the following section), or they can be applied
individually to each control (as detailed in the previous screenshot).

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Looking Back, Looking Forward

Each style has options to define:

A Name

A texture or text color for the different states of the control it's attached to
(Normal, Hover, Active, and Focused)

The border, margin, padding, and overflow sizes for the control
(for each edge)

A Font (with suitable size, style, alignment, word wrapping, and rich
text support options)

A text clipping size

Image position within the control

Offset settings for the content within the control

A fixed width and height

Stretching options for the width and height

I recommended configuring a public GUIStyle property in a class and then

modifying it in Editor Inspector when setting up a GUIStyle, for example:
using UnityEngine;
[ExecuteInEditMode]
public class GUIStyles : MonoBehaviour {
public GUIStyle;
void OnGUI() {
//Create a label using the GUIStyle property above
GUI.Label(new Rect(25, 15, 100, 30), "Label",
myGUIStyle);
}
}

You can also configure a GUIStyle in code, however it's not

recommended as the editor is just better at it.

It is worth noting that having too many different GUIStyles all over
the place can become very inefficient and hard to maintain. If you
find you are using a lot of GUIStyles then I'd recommend you create
a single script attached to a common object (say Main Camera) in
your scene with all your GUIStyle's defined and have each script take
GUIStyle references from there.

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Chapter 1

When you attach the preceding script with the GUIStyle property to a GameObject
in your scene, it will look like this in Inspector:

Note that the first time you open it in the editor you will
get NullReferenceException in the console window;
this is just because you haven't configured GUIStyle yet.

If you don't want to apply a style to each and every control directly, you can then
optionally create GUISkin, which contains all the styles for each control type.
This is then applied using the GUI class prior to drawing any controls.
A GUISkin also has some additional options that apply to the GUI, which include:

Setting whether a double-click action selects

Setting whether a triple-click action selects

The color of the cursor

The cursor flash speed

The default selection color

Custom styles (an array of GUIStyle properties you can then reuse
on controls)
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Looking Back, Looking Forward

To demonstrate, click on the Create button in the project folder view and select
GUISkin, which will give you a new GUISkin asset in the project view. By selecting
it, you will see the following window in Inspector:

As you can see, it contains all the options for altering the style globally for each
control. To use GUISkin, create a new script called GUISkins, then replace its
contents with the following:
using UnityEngine;
[ExecuteInEditMode]
public class GUISkins : MonoBehaviour {
public GUISkin MySkin;
void OnGUI()
{
GUI.skin = mySkin;
GUI.Label(new Rect(25, 15, 100, 30), "Label");
//Draw the rest of your controls
}
}

Then attach the GUISkins script to Main Camera in your current scene
(disabling any other scripts currently attached) and drag the GUISkin you
have created and apply it to the My Skin property of the script in the inspector:
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Chapter 1

By setting the skin at the beginning of any GUI drawing, any and all controls drawn
will now use your custom skin instead of the Unity default. If you wish, you can use
several skins by just changing the skin before drawing more controls.
For some of the best examples of GUISkins, try installing the Unity Extra GUI Skins
asset (http://bit.ly/UnityExtraGUISkins), which is a collection of skin samples
built by Unity themselves (and it's free).
Note that if you want to reuse your own skins in other projects
(or sell more skins through the asset store), then you can export
them using Unity's Export Package option under Assets in the
menu. For more details, check out http://docs.unity3d.com/
Manual/HOWTO-exportpackage.html

Here's an example of what the GUISkins asset gives you:

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Looking Back, Looking Forward

GUI events and properties

To support events in the legacy GUI area, Unity added an entire event handler
specifically for GUI interactions. This class is aptly named the Event class.
Remember, this section refers to the legacy GUI Event classes,
which has nothing to do with the new UnityEvent system
introduced in the new Unity UI system. See Chapter 6, Working with
the UI Source, for more details of the UnityEvent system.

These events center on user and device input, varying from:

Event types: Is it a key event, mouse event, and so on

Event values: Which key pressed, mouse button pressed, and so on

Event summary information: Modifier keys, mouse movement delta,

and so on

To access the events you simply need to query the Event.current property to get
the current Event state. (The Event state updates when there is a change, until then
you will get the last/previous state.)
The logon example earlier shows an example for using events, where we detect if
the user has pressed a key and if that key is the Enter key as shown in this script:
if (Event.current.isKey &&
Event.current.keyCode == KeyCode.Return &&
GUI.GetNameOfFocusedControl() == "PasswordField")
{
CheckUserPasswordAndRegister();
}

Along with the events, the GUI class also provides some additional properties you
can query or set in the OnGUI method, namely:

enabled: Is the GUI enabled and displayed on the screen. Can it be used to

changed: This returns true if any controls' values have changed since the last
call of OnGUI.

color: This is the global color tint for the GUI layout.

contentColor: This is the global text color tint for the GUI.

turn on or off controls that are to be drawn to the screen.

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Chapter 1

backgroundColor: This is the global background color tint.

depth: This is the depth order for the current GUI script. This is useful if you
have GUI elements in more than one script and want to layer them.

matrix: The 3D transformation matrix for the current GUI.

All of these elements can be used to override all controls or individual controls by
setting them in between controls.

Layout controls
If you prefer not to hand draw the position of every single control in your GUI,
Unity does offer some automatic layout controls from the GUILayout class.
The Layout controls (using GUILayout instead of just GUI) have the same set of
controls as the normal GUI class (hence I'm not going to describe them all over
again), the main difference is that you do not need to specify a Rect area to draw
the control, as it will just be drawn at the first suitable location; any further controls
added will be laid out appropriately with enough spacing between the controls.
You can also control the spacing and even if you want, any empty space between the
controls using the Width, Height, and Spacing properties (Space/FlexibleSpace) of
GUILayout, following the same rules as for GUI controls (setting up the GUILayout
before drawing a control).
If you don't want the layout to take up the maximum space for a control,
you also have the settings for Width (MaxWidth/MinWidth) and Height
(MaxHeight/MinHeight).
The main differences are as follows:

BeginGroup becomes BeginArea

Horizontal and vertical groups (sub groups)

BeginArea
Instead of defining Groups, you define Areas. Apart from the name, they behave
exactly the same. This is the only layout control that takes a Rect parameter to
specify where you want to draw the controls (excluding Windows of course); all
GUILayout controls are then aligned to Area in the same way they are in Group.
It's recommended that when using GUILayout controls that you
place them in an Area for the best effect.
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Looking Back, Looking Forward

Horizontal and Vertical layout groups

To control the layout of controls, you can define a set of controls to draw
in a particular direction, either horizontally or vertically. You start these in
the same way as areas by setting a GUILayout.BeginHorizontal() and
GUILayout.EndHorizontal() command. Like the Area, you can specify
additional content for the new sub-area such as text or textures.

The Asset Store

Several packages on the Unity asset store have tried to build a more fluent UI creation
system. They have met with varying success and all suffer from one underlying issue,
they weren't built by Unity and don't have access to some of the underlying runtime
and rendering components of the Unity editor and player. This results in some
performance issues (but in some cases they are actually faster than the legacy GUI,
especially on mobile platforms) and (in some cases) hacky workarounds. All in all,
most have done incredibly well without access to Unity's innards.
With the release of the new Unity UI system however, I would recommend checking
the state of many of the GUI assets out there as several (quite understandably) have
bowed their heads and are dropping off the store. The main package is still ongoing
is NGUI (http://bit.ly/UnityAssetStore-NGUI), but it does have a hefty price
tag to it. With it though are a multitude of supporting assets to make its adoption
easier and offer integration into several other assets.

Enter Thunderdome
Now that you've seen what Unity has had available for so long with the legacy GUI
(and if you have experienced it you will undoubtedly shudder at this point), it is a
very welcome relief that the UI system has received such an overhaul in Unity 4.6.
It has been a long time coming and very much anticipated!
Note that this section is just a preliminary overview so you know
what's coming. Each section will be described in depth in the
following chapters.

Recognizing the need for change, Unity set upon the path of redesigning the GUI
system from the ground up. They have looked at what games have needed, what the
community has built (even with the limitations and restrictions of not having access
to Unity's core) and then sprinkled some fairy dust and hey presto, the new Unity UI
system was born.

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Chapter 1

It has been a long, hard road with many bumps in the way, but the journey has
begun (I say begun because the Unity UI journey does not end with Unity 4.6;
it will continue to evolve into Unity 5 and beyond like many other components).
With a keen eye on the future, the new Unity UI system delivers on several core
points, namely:

Extensibility: Each and every control is a script and you can create new
scripts to derive from them and create your own controls.

Uses sprites: The new Unity UI system is predominately built on top of the
new sprite system introduced in Unity 4.3. It has also however extended the
sprite system with some new features as well.

Tight integration with GameObjects: Each control is a GameObject in its

own right with the same capabilities as any other game object including the
ability to add further components and/or scripts.

Exposed events: Each control has its own events which you can attach to and
extend upon.

Tight integration with rendering and update loops: Because they are
GameObjects, you can even override the default rendering and updating
of a control.

Animation: Each control can be fully animated using the new Animator
dope sheet and Mecanim. Some controls (such as the button) leverage
Mecanim to do state-driven control. There are even animation specific events.

Screenspace AND WorldSpace: Finally UI can be drawn in 3D in a

performant way that doesn't involve hacking the project together or
having to use PRO-only features.

FREE: Unity UI comes as standard as part of the free license version of Unity
(indie developers rejoice).

Open source: Unity has made the source for the UI system open source and
available for anyone to look at and even offer fixes / new suggestions,
to coders delight.

New layouts
The layout features begin the story of the new Unity UI; they set the stage and
ultimately define where controls will be drawn, in which direction they will be
drawn, and also how they fit within a certain area.

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Looking Back, Looking Forward

Rect Transform
Introduced in 4.3 with the new Sprite functionality, the Rect Transform component
provides a defining region for any 2D element within the Unity system. However,
like most things in 4.6, it has received significant updates allowing more control over
the area it manages as shown here:

It also sports a new button in the editor (called the Rect Tool) to edit and manage
Rect Transform from the scene view, as shown in the following screenshot:

The Canvas
At the core of all Unity UI drawings, is the new Canvas control. It acts as the paint
board for your Unity UI controls (and even other canvases), once rendered the
canvas is drawn to the relative point in your scene.
Thanks to vast improvements this canvas can be drawn in basic 2D overlay mode
(same as the legacy GUI system), in 2D camera space (adding perspective), or
even directly in 3D world space like as any other traditional 3D object (such as a
rendertarget for UI) as shown here:

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Chapter 1

Groups
In the legacy GUI, groups were defined by the controls themselves;
if you wanted to orientate multiple controls together in a particular fashion,
you simply couldn't.
With the new Unity UI system, you can define several layout groups.

Horizontal Layout Group

A Horizontal Layout Group displays items in a horizontal line:

Vertical Layout Group

A Vertical Layout Group displays controls in a vertical line:

Grid Layout Group

A Grid Layout Group lays out controls according to a grid-based pattern of rows
and columns:

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Looking Back, Looking Forward

Toggle Group
A Toggle Group manages arranges toggle controls in to a group where only one
can be active at a time (Like a Multiple choice selection where only one option can
be chosen).

Canvas Group
A Canvas Group allows you to generically group child UI controls together and
affect several common properties from the group, for example, the Alpha value
of all child items:

We'll cover these in more detail in Chapter 2, Building Layouts.

Masking
Recognizing the need for generic masking capabilities within the new Unity UI system
(the ability to hide portions of UI within a certain region), they created a new Mask
component. This can be added to any GameObject and any child objects outside the
bounds of the parent GameObject would not be drawn, either partially or fully.
The Image control (highlighted later in the chapter) also includes an additional
masking feature, when the Image Type property of an image is set to Filled;
it gives several additional masking options to gradually bring the image into
view. Just for reference now, we'll go into this in a lot more detail later.

New controls
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
Obviously when we look at a GUI, there is only so much that is really needed and
Unity has recognized this. Starting with a fresh slate, they have looked at what it
means to create a stunning UI and what you need to build one.

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Chapter 1

So with this fresh start, here are the new Unity UI controls:
Control

Description

Selectable

The selectable component is the base object for anything that needs
interaction, and it basically turns any other component into a
button. Note that it cannot be used on the same GameObject with
something that is already selectable (button, toggle, and sliderbar).

(only available in
the component list)
Panel

This is a highlighted region, similar to the old Box control, mainly

used to define groups when additional components are added.
When Rect Transform alone is not enough. (Actually its an Image
control with a preset image and set to full screen)

Text

If text is your aim, then this control is for you. It gives you text
options like font, color, font style, and overflow. Can also be set to
resize text to fit the container it is in.

Image

This is a basic image that can either use a sprite or material to

display to the screen along with an optional color tint.

Raw Image

This is an alternate image display component that takes a

texture instead of a sprite or a material and can define a color
tint. Additionally has options to set the UV coordinates for the
displayed image.

Button

If you need a big red (color optional) button to press, then this
control is for you. The button has received the biggest overhaul
by far with so many options it will likely take a chapter on its
own to explain.
It also includes a new UnityEvent framework that allows you to
create behaviors that can affect other objects or scripts directly from
the editor.
You can even set different colors for different states of the button,
swap out images, or if you wish, use Mecanim and the new
animation system to animate the button between states.

Toggle

Switch it on, switch it off. The toggle takes the button behavior and
extends it as a prime example of what extensibility features are in
the new UI framework. It adds additional properties to the button
framework to identify the checkbox graphic and a grouping option
should you want to group checkboxes (using a Toggle group).

Scrollbar

It slices, it dices, it even slides as well. Your typical scroll bar with
a handle, fully customizable with options to control the direction,
minimum and maximum values, step size, and number of steps to
slide between. Also includes the event system used for buttons for
when the value changes.

Slider

This is a more advanced version of Scrollbar with fill options

(for a filling cereal bar) so you can build the fanciest health
bar with ease.
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Looking Back, Looking Forward

New UnityEvent system

Unity has always lacked a good and robust event system. Sure there are the
SendMessage and BroadcastMessage functions, but these are really slow and
can be expensive.
The new UnityEvent System is built around providing and handling all events with
a scene, primarily for the new UI system; but like everything else in Unity 4.x, it is
built to be extensible, and you can enhance your own components and scripts to
expose themselves automatically to the event system and derive new events when
things happen.
A note about UI events in the new Unity UI system: the interaction
events all rely on raycasting to detect clicks, touches, hovering,
and so on. It is very fast and efficient. However, if you build a
new UI component that cannot react to raycasting, then it won't be
recognized or respond to such interaction events.

Control extensibility
One very cool feature of the new UI system is that practically every component is
a script, meaning it can be used as the base for any new scripts you create. You can
either use them as is or even extend them further.
In Chapter 6, Working with the UI Source, we will cover the coding behind all these
components including a walk through the open source library. I'll even throw in a
load of examples and reusable components from the community and myself.

Animation
A core tenant of the new UI system (since it is built upon the core of the new 2D
sprite system) was animation. Every single control or component of the new Unity
UI system is able to be fully animated.
Not only that, but it also gives different modes for how properties can be animated,
from static fixed values to dynamic values that will alter and update with the
controls behavior.

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Chapter 1

Even the Asset Store has you covered

Through the dark of the beta process, which many developers participated in.
Several worthy asset creators worked feverishly to update their craft to make use of
the new UI system ready for release. Some existing projects were greatly enhanced
and even some new toolkits.
Note that these recommendations are from my own experiences
through the beta evolution of the new UI system. I've worked with
(and against at times) a lot of things described in this section.
I most certainly am not being paid to highlight these, they are just
the best out there solving very unique gaps or limitations of the
new UI system to date (however, Unity isn't sitting still, so these
teams better keep up!).
No doubt I'll mention more of them on my blog as I find them.

I'll point these out again in some of the chapters where you will get the most use out
of them or where they are relevant.
The most notable assets at the time of writing are the following.

TextMeshPro ($65)
This is a fantastic text management system that helps to bridge the gaps and the
limitations in Unity's aging text rendering system. Unity themselves have noted on
several occasions they want to rip out the text system and replace it with something
better, until that happens, the best asset to help with text generation from within
Unity (not just getting an artist to build lots of text assets) is TextMeshPro.
TextMeshPro has been around for quite a while now and has run with the
leaders to get it updated for the new UI system but the author didn't stop there.
TextMeshPro has gone far and beyond its humble text rendering beginnings to
add such features as improved alignment/indentation and rich text support, even
adding vertex animation for the generated text! (Just check out http://bit.ly/
TextMeshProAnimation.)
You can find TextMeshPro on the asset store here: http://bit.ly/
UnityUITextMeshPro.

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Looking Back, Looking Forward

GUI Generator ($40)

Building clean and efficient UIs in Unity have always been a strain (just look at this
chapter!), this is where GUI Generator comes in, starting with the old GUI, then
adapting to also handle NGUI and now the new Unity UI system. It's a quick and
advanced tool to clean up the look and feel of your UI (no, it doesn't build your UI
for you, it styles it!).
It also has many built-in effects you can add to your UI to make it stunning. Like
TextMeshPro, the author has been working hard through the beta to get this great
tool updated to handle the new UI elements and skin them to great effect.
You can find GUI Generator on the asset store here: http://bit.ly/
UnityUIGUIGenerator.

MenuPage ($10)
Not every asset for the new UI has to be a big beast of a tool meant to save you
hours, sometimes you just need something to get you off the ground and using the
new UI with great effect. This is where MenuPage comes in.
Put simply it's a new asset on the store aimed at building menu systems using the
new UI system automatically. They are fully configured, laid out effectively and
offer some advanced features such as fading, transitions, and much more.
What's even better is that all the source code is there and is fully documented/
commented, so you can learn from some of the best coders out there purveying
their wares.
You can find MenuPage on the asset store here: http://bit.ly/UnityUIMenuPage.

Summary
So now we have a deep appreciation of the past and a glimpse into the future.
One thing you might realize is that there is no one stop shop when it comes to
Unity; each feature has its pros and cons and each has its uses. There may still
be cases when it is just easier to use the Unity legacy GUI to achieve an effect
(still using the basic GUI.DrawTexture for a splash screen for example, although
even that is very easy with the new UI system) provided you take the performance
concerns on board with mobile devices. It all comes down to what you want to
achieve and the way you want to achieve it; never dismiss anything just because
it's old (except for GUIText and GUITexture, they are just really really old)

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Chapter 1

In this chapter, we covered the following topics:

The history of Unity legacy GUI

Detailed walkthrough of the legacy Unity GUI

Whistlestop tour of the new Unity UI system and what we can expect from
this title

In the next chapter, we will start with the underlying framework and guts behind
the new GUI system, namely:

The new Rect Transform control (not just for Unity UI)

The new Rect Transform component (and why it's great)

The Canvas control

What Unity have done for scaling and resolution for UIs

The all new and improved Event messaging system for the Unity UI system,
complete with new shiny raycasting features and helpers

It promises to be a fun ride, and once we are through that, then in chapter 3,
Control, Control, You Must Learn Control we can move on to actually building
some UI and then placing it in your game scenes in weird and wonderful ways.
Now stop reading this and turn the page already!!

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Get more information Unity 3D UI Essentials

Where to buy this book

You can buy Unity 3D UI Essentials from the Packt Publishing website.
Alternatively, you can buy the book from Amazon, BN.com, Computer Manuals and most internet
book retailers.
Click here for ordering and shipping details.

www.PacktPub.com

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