Mastering UI Development with Unity : Develop Engaging and Immersive User Interfaces with Unity / Ashley Godbold.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Godbold, Ashley, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Unity (Electronic resource).

Video games--Design.

Video games.

Video games--Programming.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (638 pages)

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

Birmingham, England : Packt Publishing Ltd., [2024]

Biography/History:

Godbold Dr. Ashley: Ashley Godbold is a programmer, game designer, artist, mathematician, and teacher. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, a Master of Science in Mathematics, a Bachelor of Science in Game Art and Design, and a Doctor of Computer Science in Emerging Media where her dissertation research focused on educational video game design. She also authored Mastering Unity 2D Game Development: Second Edition (Packt Publishing) and the first edition of Mastering UI Development with Unity. In her free time, she enjoys playing video games and watching anime with her husband, daughter, three cats, and dog.

Summary:

A captivating, fully functional UI is necessary for player interaction and engagement. Unity's tools give you the opportunity to create fascinating UIs to make your game stand out. Written by a skilled game designer and programmer, Mastering UI Development with Unity begins by describing various design considerations for developing stellar UIs for different genres and platforms. From laying out UIs and creating movements through animation and particle effects to optimizing UI performance, every aspect is meticulously covered. Next, you’ll learn the technicalities of implementing UIs with all three UI systems provided by Unity as well as both the Unity input systems. You'll be able to breathe life into your game with visually engaging heads-up displays, pause menus, health bars, circular progress bars, animated menus, and more. This book not only teaches you how to lay out visual elements but also how to program these features and implement them across multiple games of varying genres. With practical examples, you'll understand how to develop and implement UIs across multiple platforms and screen resolutions with minimal changes. By the end of this book, you’ll have the skills you need to develop game UIs confidently with both technical and aesthetic considerations using Unity’s versatile UI elements.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright and Credits

Contributors

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Designing User Interfaces

Chapter 1: Designing User Interfaces

Technical requirements

Defining UI and GUI

The four game interface types

Laying out the UI elements

Resolution and aspect ratio

Changing the aspect ratio and resolution of the game view

Building for a single resolution

Summary

Chapter 2: Designing Mobile User Interfaces

Setting the resolution, aspect ratio, and orientation

Setting the resolution in the Game view

The Device Simulator

Building for a specific orientation

Recommended button sizes

Full screen/screen portion taps

The thumb zone

Other mobile inputs

Device-specific resources

Chapter 3: Designing VR, MR, and AR UI

What are XR, VR, MR, and AR?

Designing UI for VR

Visual UI placement and considerations

Interactable UI placement and considerations

Designing UI for MR

Designing UI for AR

Further reading

Chapter 4: Universal Design and Accessibility for UI

What are universal design and accessible design?

Universal design principles

Equitable use

Flexibility in use

Simple and intuitive use

Perceptible information

Tolerance of error

Low physical effort

Size and space for approach and use

Accessibility design

Vision

Hearing and speech

Mobility

Cognitive and emotional

Additional resources

Chapter 5: User Interface and Input Systems in Unity

The three UI systems

Unity UI (or uGUI)

IMGUI

UI Toolkit

Choosing between the UI systems

The two input systems

The Input Manager

The new Input System

Choosing between the Input System and the new Input System

Part 2: Unity UI Basics.

Chapter 6: Canvases, Panels, and Basic Layouts

UI Canvas

Rect Transform component

Canvas component

Canvas Scalar component

Graphic Raycaster component

Canvas Renderer component

UI Panel

Rect Transform

Rect Tool

Anchor and Pivot Points

Canvas Group component

Introducing UI Text and Image

Examples

Laying out a basic HUD

Placing a 2D game background image

Setting up a basic pop-up menu

Chapter 7: Exploring Automatic Layouts

Types of automatic layout groups

Horizontal Layout Group

Vertical Layout Group

Grid Layout Group

Layout Element

Ignore Layout

The Width and Height properties

Fitters

Content Size Fitter

Aspect Ratio Fitter

Laying out a HUD selection menu

Laying out a grid inventory

Chapter 8: The Event System and Programming for UI

Accessing UI elements in code

UnityEngine.UI namespace

UI variable types

The Event System

Event System Manager

Input Manager

Input functions for buttons and key presses

GetButton

GetAxis

GetKey

GetMouseButton

Input Modules

Standalone Input Module

BaseInputModule/PointerInputModule

Input for multi-touch

Input for accelerometer and gyroscope

Event Trigger

Event types

Adding an action to the event

Event inputs

Raycasters

Graphic Raycaster

Other Raycasters

Showing and hiding pop-up menus with keypress

Pausing the game

Dragging and dropping inventory items

Pan and zoom with mouse and multi-touch input

Part 3: The Interactable Unity UI Components

Chapter 9: The UI Button Component

UI Button

The Button component

Transitions

Navigation.

Invisible button zones

Navigating through Buttons and using First Selected

Loading scenes with Button presses

Button Animation Transitions

Chapter 10: UI Text and TextMeshPro

UI Text GameObject

The Text and Character properties

The Paragraph properties

The Color and Material properties

The Raycast and Maskable properties

Text-TextMeshPro

Text Input properties

Main Settings

Extra Settings

TextMeshPro Project Settings

Working with fonts

Importing new fonts

Custom fonts

Font assets

Exploring the markup format

Font style

Font color

Font size

Using style sheets

Translating text

Creating animated text

Translating the dialogue

Custom font

TextMeshPro - Warped Text with Gradient

Chapter 11: UI Images and Effects

UI Image component properties

Image Type

UI effect components

Shadow

Outline

Position As UV1

Horizontal and circular health/progress meters

Mute Buttons with sprite swap

Adding press-and-hold/long-press functionality

Creating a floating eight-directional virtual analog stick

Chapter 12: Using Masks, Scrollbars, and Scroll Views

Using masks

The Mask component

Rect Mask 2D component

Implementing UI Scrollbars

The Scrollbar component

Implementing UI Scroll View

Scroll Rect component

Making a scroll view from a pre-existing menu

Chapter 13: Other Interactable UI Components

Using UI Toggle

Toggle component

Toggle Group component

UI Slider

Slider component

UI Dropdown and Dropdown - TextMeshPro

Dropdown Template

The Dropdown component

UI Input Field

Input Field component.

Input Field - TextMeshPro

TextMeshPro - Input Field component

Creating a dropdown menu with images

Part 4: Unity UI Advanced Topics

Chapter 14: Animating UI Elements

Animation Clips

Animation Events

Animator Controller

The Animator of Transition Animations

Animator layers

Setting Animation Parameters in scripts

Animator Behaviours

Animating pop-up windows to fade in and out

Animating a complex loot box

Chapter 15: Particles in the UI

Particles in the UI

Creating a Particle System that displays in the UI

Chapter 16: Utilizing World Space UI

When to use World Space UI

Appropriately scaling text in the Canvas

Other considerations when working in World Space

2D World Space status indicators

3D hovering health bars

Chapter 17: Optimizing Unity UI

Optimization basics

Frame Rate

GPU and CPU

Tools for determining performance

Statistics window

Unity Profiler

Unity Frame Debugger

Basic Unity UI Optimization Strategies

Using multiple Canvases and Canvas Hierarchies

Minimizing the use of Layout Groups

Hiding objects appropriately

Appropriately time object pooling enabling and disabling

Reducing Raycast computations

Part 5: Other UI and Input Systems

Chapter 18: Getting Started with UI Toolkit

Overview of UI Toolkit

Installing the UI Toolkit package

Parts of the UI Toolkit system

Visual Elements and UI Hierarchy

Creating UI with the UI Builder

Using the UI Document component

Making The UI interactable with C#

The UIElements namespaces

Getting a reference to UI Documents variables

Managing Visual Element events.

Accessing Visual Element properties

Using the UI Toolkit to make an Editor virtual pet

Resources

Chapter 19: Working with IMGUI

IMGUI overview

IMGUI Controls

IMGUI in the Inspector

Using IMGUI to show framerate in-game

Using IMGUI to make an Inspector button that imports data

Chapter 20: The New Input System

Installing the Input System

Polling vs subscribing

Input System elements

Connecting Actions to code

Creating basic character controller Actions

Creating a basic character controller with the PlayerInput Component

Creating a basic character controller by referencing Actions in your code

Index

Other Books You May Enjoy.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781803238760

1803238763

OCLC:

1439829409