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How about UIWidget?

Discussion in 'UI Toolkit' started by Bagazi, Apr 26, 2020.

  1. Bagazi

    Bagazi

    Joined:
    Apr 18, 2018
    Posts:
    611
    According to the official introduction，UIWidget is the Unity version of Flutter,which is Google’s UI toolkit for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase(official introduction too... ). I am very curious whether uiwidget could reach the performance comparing to flutter.Cause UIWidget was renderering on a Raw image in Unity, I am wanderering if this could be some performance bottleneck or not.:)
     
    Bagazi, Apr 26, 2020
    #1
    jhocking likes this.

  2. benoitd_unity

    benoitd_unity

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jan 2, 2018
    Posts:
    331
    Hi Bagazi,

    The UIWidget repository is an experiment conducted by another Unity team and is not part of the official UI Toolkit. We are not recommending it for production but you’re welcome to try it out if you’re curious.
     
    benoitd_unity, Apr 29, 2020
    #2
    jhocking and Bagazi like this.

  3. ftofoli_arthrex

    ftofoli_arthrex

    Joined:
    Jun 30, 2020
    Posts:
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    Hi Benoit,

    Would you mind expanding your reply with the reasons why this is the case?

    I'm experimenting with both UIToolkit and UIWidgets and I'm truly impressed with both, but UIWidgets seems even more promising being inline with modern UI approaches (declarative), familiar (if you know flutter) and it feels more "Native" when running on different platforms (micro animations, etc...).

    Is this a technical reason (e.g. performance)? Anything else I'm missing?

    Thanks!
     
    ftofoli_arthrex, Aug 27, 2020
    #3

  4. benoitd_unity

    benoitd_unity

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jan 2, 2018
    Posts:
    331
    Yes absolutely and thanks for your feedback.

    Well first of all, one obvious reason is that UI Toolkit went into development earlier, and with a few goals in mind:
    1. It should be used to make both Editor and Runtime UI. For both targets, good performance should be achievable for any level of UI complexity.
    2. It should be used by content creators with no programming skills. Using assets to describe hierarchy, layout and styling allows us to create new visual authoring tools, and integrate well with existing Unity features.
    That's if you're coming from Flutter. UI Toolkit will be more familiar to people with Web and WPF experience.

    We have plans to support that kind of animations in UI Toolkit during next year.

    Ultimately, UI Toolkit is the solution Unity is investing into, which will provide many more benefits down the road such as deep integration with existing features like SRP, TextMesh Pro and Input System, world space UI, accessibility etc…

    Cheers,
     
    benoitd_unity, Aug 27, 2020
    #4
    jhocking, JoNax97, uDamian and 1 other person like this.