[RELEASED] U2DEX: Unity 2D Editor Extensions

U2DEX v1.47 has just been shipped to the Asset Store team for review!

You can read about the changes in its forum thread here. It should be available on the Asset Store in a few days.

 

U2DEX v1.47 is now live on the Asset Store!

New users will get the newest version automatically, while current users will have to download the update through the Asset Store.

 

U2DEX is 30% off in the big sale (about $10)! If it's been on your wishlist (or if you just found it!) now's a great time to pick it up, as it likely won't be on sale for a while!

 

Quick update: it looks like the rest of our assets joined the party. All of our assets (U2DEX, uNote, and uTemplate) are now on sale for 30% off!

 

U2DEX v1.48 is now live on the Asset Store!

New users will get the newest version automatically, while current users will have to download the update through the Asset Store.

The full changelog for this release can be found on our website, here.

 

U2DEX is 30% off in the Mega Sale (about $10)! If it's on your wishlist (or if you just found it!) now's a great time to pick it up!

Our other assets, uNote and uTemplate, are also 30% off!

 

The Mega Sale is quickly coming to a close! Time's running out to grab U2DEX at 30% off (about $10), so if you've been eyeing it, now's your chance to pick it up!

 

Any updates on this for Unity 2018 / 2019?

 

Hi there @Stexe!

U2DEX should already be fully compatible with Unity 2018. Unity 2019 should also be compatible, but if you run into any issues do let me know.

Thanks for checking in!

 

U2DEX v1.50 is now live on the Asset Store!

New users will get the newest version automatically, while current users will have to download the update through the Asset Store.

The full changelog for this release can be found on our website, here.

 

@UnfinityGames
I primarily use U2DEX for its snapping feature and extra grid (in addition to the Unity grid) for my pixel art game. Thus, I only apply the U2DEX inspector for the Transform class.

New Particle Systems that are created usually start with a 270 or -90 rotation in the x axis on the Transform. I have no way of accessing this value when using the U2DEX inspector, as the U2DEX inspector hides this information. The "degrees" value that U2DEX provides remains 0, which does not seem to be accurate.

Is this value not accessible by design? If so, can we keep the snapping option for Transform while retaining the original Unity inspector values and variables?

 

Hi @AssembledVS,

Unfortunately, ParticleSystems are a bit weird in that their rotation isn't technically handled by the Transform Inspector, so the values are a bit wonky. I recommend not applying the U2DEX Inspector to them.

In this case, I would suggest adding ParticleSystem to the Applicable Classes, and then unchecking the checkbox to turn off the U2DEX Inspector for them. This will let you use the normal Unity Transform Inspector for ParticleSystem objects. If you still want snapping, you can create an empty parent object and apply the U2DEX Inspector to that for snapping.

However, in your Applicable Classes list you'll need to make sure that you order your classes correctly. It'll need to look like this:

ParticleSystem (unchecked and disabled)
Transform (checked and enabled)

Transform will have to be after ParticleSystem in the list, as the entries are processed in order. This way ParticleSystem objects get their inspector disabled before Transform is applied to them.

Hopefully that solves your problem!

 

Thanks for the reply. Given that I do not need to control the Particle System rotation variable very often, I think that I will enable/disable as needed. Regarding the snapping, it would get too heavy for me to have extra empty Game Objects for each Particle System, I think.

However, I'm wondering why the snapping and the U2DEX Inspector could not be separated?

 

You can absolutely toggle it to get at the ParticleSystem rotation outside of U2DEX.

Regarding your second question, Snapping is run in the U2DEX Inspector out of necessity, really. U2DEX was originally designed around Unity 3.5 thereabouts, and there wasn't really a great way to do what it did at the time. Now, in 2020, there are potentially other ways to handle some of the custom things developed for U2DEX, but they aren't necessarily better. Keeping Snapping in the Inspector makes sense since it's an easy, reliable way for U2DEX to know, among other things, A.) what you have selected, and B.) what kind of object it is (so it can be enabled and disabled according to Applicable Classes).

It could theoretically be possible to decouple everything, but it would make things clunkier (i.e. have this EditorWindow open to enable snapping, etc.). I understand why you're asking, as ParticleSystem components are a bit of an edge-case here, but decoupling everything would likely cause more issues than it would fix. Sorry about that!

 

When toggling Transform as in Applicable Class within U2DEX's preferences, I don't think that the Transform's 'Size' option should be limited to Game Objects that have a Sprite Renderer. I use all of U2DEX's features on all sorts of Game Objects and specifically need the degree rotation and snapping features for them, even when they don't use Sprite Renderers.

For example, this came up today when I was using a spline-creation asset. There's no Sprite Renderer or any other rendering except for the asset's built-in, editor-only spline visualization. But if I need to resize it, the 'Size' option is unavailable. To make it available, I have to either disable the Transform class within U2DEX's preferences or to attach a Sprite Renderer temporarily.

Perhaps a suggestion: maybe instead of disabling and hiding Unity's native 3D Transform options, there could be an option to unhide them and manipulate their values alongside the U2DEX-specific values. Beyond the Particle System rotation issue that you helped me out with above (almost exactly a year ago!), I have found that I often need access to the x/y/z specific rotation values, not just the degrees and radians. The splines that I mentioned above are one such case, sometimes including Game Objects that are travelling along these splines.

Unity is still a 3D engine at its core and we often need access to the 3D features that are blocked out by the U2DEX Inspector. I realize that many people use U2DEX to streamline 2D development, but of course at some point they will come across these issues. An option or toggle of some kind that gives you quick access to the default Inspector features seems like a good idea to me.

 

Hi there, @AssembledVS!

I'll mark the suggestion down. It's not so much that scaling is "locked" to SpriteRenderers, it's that the U2DEX Inspector is actually grabbing the underlying scale/size values for supported 2D objects (in this case, SpriteRenderer -- although it does the same type of thing for 2D Toolkit, etc.). Most of them don't actually use the Transform scale value, so it's something that had to be hard-coded for detected toolkit objects. At the time U2DEX was made, adjusting Transform scale on non-3D objects had varying degrees of reliability, ranging from doing nothing, to doing nothing visually but screwing up other calculations, to causing drawing issues if the Z scale was less than 1. Originally, it was safer for U2DEX to override it all and try to prevent someone from making a mistake that would likely cause gameplay or rendering issues that were difficult to debug (who would think Transform scale values would effect non-scale properties?).

You can still try and do the same thing as the Particle System solution (basically a parent object that has the U2DEX inspector applied, leaving the child spline node untouched), but that may or may not work depending on how your spline system functions.

It's actually a more complicated issue than you would think, but I'll mark it down and see about investigating.

Thanks for the suggestion!