Ideas on creating Parallaxing system that is based on Z value and/or Layer

Hey everyone,

So I am a newbie to Unity, Just switched after working with GameMaker for over 2 years. I had a really nice Parallaxing system built in GM that would work based on the objects Depth (Z in Unity) and It would work on both the X and Y axis. I need the Y cause my game has a lot of vertical movement. I downloaded
Free Parallax for Unity (2D) (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/29422) And I looked at the script and it had around 500 lines of code. That seems like complete overkill. And it didn't even support the Z or even sorting layer parallaxing.
I also looked at the 2d platformer example with the spaceship and the potato dude. That was way simplier but I have the drag the background assets into the script. That seems very tedious and slow when you are working on a big game.

I am gonna be trying to convert my GM code into Unity. But if anyone has any tips or a system already created that you want to share with me that would be much appreciated!

Thanks

 

I think what's generally done is each Layer is assigned to its own camera and that camera is given a value to "lag behind" the main camera to easily create the effect.

 

Hmmmm interesting. I have been working on a system that pulls the z value of objects with certain tags.
you can see my work here
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/1018406/invalid-token-float-cs1519-cant-figure-out-how-to.html
As you can see I am stuck, so I might try this layer business!
Do you have any more info than that. Like and example file or something?