Right way to show grid?

I want to show a square on top of the floor so the player can place some objects in my game. I was wondering about the performance of instanciating a tile using the player's mouse position. Is a game object the best way to show this UI stuff? Or does unity have another resource that can better tackle this problem?
I've got the right result: https://giphy.com/gifs/elP4UNAIXpSJ7QyyWd/links

The used code: https://gist.github.com/IanPedroV/b7952998da7e06fb86ea0831af1bc863

Sorry if this is in the wrong place in the forums or something.

 

Use plane with repeated texture of cross/square.
Or write shader, to generate grid.
Or use asset store, to find existing solutions.

 

Your link just opens giphy for me. So I am not sure what it is that you want. However if you want a grid repeating itself, the best way would probably be sampling a tiled texture. The using shader method which @AntySK mentioned, is fun and gives you easy control over line thickness and such. But the main issue is aliasing as the camera moves and also along steep angle of the plane. The repeated texture method he mentioned is the best way since you can use mipmaps and anisotropic filtering.

The issue with that method is that you are losing control over line thickness. Another method is to use the using shader to generate grid method, but sampling a gradient map to determine the edges of the grid line. Like this you still have easy control over the thickness, but also dont have aliasing issue as your gradient map is receiving mip maps and anisotropic filtering

 

This is the right place, though I think you confused people by talking about grids, and posting a link to a page of links to your gif rather than to the gif itself.


What you're doing is fine, as long as you're not instantiating a new tile highlight for every grid position. Instantiate one, then keep it around and move it & hide/unhide it as needed. If your world is a nice flat plan, this really is probably the best way to go about it. The alternative would be to use a projector, which will let it conform to non-flat surfaces, but will be more expensive.

 

I wish the forum had sent e-mails letting me know of the replies, thanks guys, sorry about the gif confusion.

 

It does have. You just need to enable it in thread tools. (Or upon thread creation);
Or, just use "Watch Thread" button.