The editor's UX needs some love.

For the love of sanity! It's about time we had some search boxes added to all menus.

And this is only the context menu for the project tab...



And while you are at it please acquire uContext and Peek then force them to have a baby, so we can have the proper tools to work in full screen. But even if not in fullscreen, constantly having to change tab and navigating the hierarchy is really slowing down our workflow. Tools like uContext/Peek are part of every 3D software I have used and unity has gotten complex to the point I feel this should be part of the editor. Personally I would go even further and add a c# console (similar to autocad) where you can type snipets of code and run them to modify and reate objects without having to write a script. Add a command history on top and it would be amazing.

TLDR.: I love the new "THEME" but with all the new features, packages and plugins the editor is getting annoying to navigate. I think it's time we got a Usability / UX / Workflow upgrade.

 

No, they shouldn't be part of the editor. Your "create" context menu became so complex due to you installing dozens of various third party plugins and assets you personally need, not because Unity has enforced them on you.

Personally, I don't use and don't need any additional plugins and assets you use, and don't need uContext/Peek with all their additional numerous toolbars and menus either. You have your freedom of installing third-party plugins you need, and I want my freedom of not installing third-party tools I don't need. These tools are available for everyone who needs them on the Asset Store, and that's where they belong. If you think there is some functionality still missing, you should address your requests to developers of uContext/Peek, or other similar plugins.

 

Unity users don't know about or do not understand UX I created this reddit a while back, not a single input and was downvoted.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/frnq9f/unity_needs_to_step_up_their_ux_game_in_alot_of/

 

I'd like more control over the editor's context menus, like some sort of override so I can change the general flow of them and the in-context shortcuts more than anything. On a (mostly) empty project, the create menu is absolutely massive on a 1080p display for instance.



It'd be massively beneficial if I could replace this entire context menu so that things I'm less prone to using could be removed or put into submenus, and if I could make it so I could assign keys to elements in the context menu to select them rapidly.

Right now it's a slog to work through.

 

Plus, most of that stuff won't be relevant to most people on most projects. The context menu should be for stuff that's regularly accessed, and that's going to be different for different people.

MS Office has a settings menu where you can select which buttons appear in which docks. Something similar would be good here, with all of them on by default but where I could go and turn off stuff that I never click on.

 

It seems really weird that "GUI Skin" is a default still when it's a skin for the rarely used IMGUI.

 

No, most of this is unity stuff and if you look a complex development environment they all have some sort of fullscreen context navigation option, Blender, Autocad, etc... Thirdparty assets are limited by exposed api. This needs to be built in to work properly.

 

I really hope this thread won't be ignored as https://forum.unity.com/threads/cleanup-project-context-menu.771269/

The context-menu is the worst.

 

I'd like a search bar in the Animator window. Usually I know the name of the exact transform I'd like to add, but have to spend time unfurling gameobjects, which is annoying when I want a child of a child of a child... Searching by the name of the gameobject would speed things up.

 

OH yes please!

 

The animation window needs a bunch of UX improvements.
Like sometimes it's impossible to edit curve because the value changes are so small that the curves appear almost flat. Or if you change a child's name the entire animation breaks and you can't manually rename the property in the animation window.

 

You can, but the standard F2 hotkey doesn't work. Instead you need to do a slow-double-click.

Better yet they could let us drag the replacement on. I admit I haven't tried that...

 

Just tried it and you're right. But it seems to be really hard to make it work. Hard enough to have made me believe this feature doesn't even exist

 

Other things that still need improvements are the animation curve editor. There should be an easy way to clamp the allowed ranges from 0-1 on each axis. The current system for manually editing values is also far too clunky.

 

i'd like a small emblem for scripts where you can search for specific variables, at least in the debug menu. for stuff like player controllers where you can have so many different variables and you're looking for a specific one, even if you organize them properly and have headers and such, having a search option would save time.

 

Would be nice to be able to pin the settings we want in the context menu and have the rest show up only when clicking a "Show More..." button. Plus add a search box on top that changes the display dynamically with autocomplete.

 

It must be 25 years since I did long running stuff on the render thread in a desktop client. sure it's a bit more work since you need to block certain features while the background process is working but it's the only way to get a modern snappy feel

 

This thread was doing nicely... and then COVID happened...

 

2020 November-December IS the middle of the COVID, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

 

Yupp October / November was the second spike atleast here in sweden. That's when I caught it, nasty virus.

 

Sorry to hear that, hope you recovered entirely without any remaining nastiness.

 

Funny virus, I had light fever for only a day. But I was tired atleast two months after. But I was lucky, I feel sorry for all those with longterm covid

 

My wish is for the whole editor not to lock up for 10 seconds while my scripts are being reloaded.

I mean who runs script compilation/processing on the main thread of an application nowadays anyway?

Also, being able to build in the background, and to continue working would be nice. Nope, whole editor locks up and we have a modal stopping us from doing anything, complete waste of 10 minutes or so.

These are the two biggest UX issues IMO.

 

Remember when they were talking about hitting 1500ms for script compilation? It's pretty garbage that the situation has gotten actively worse.

 

Devs get into what's the matter with that in this thread. Everyone hates this and they know.

 

A `search everywhere` feature for Unity editor could be great for solving problems of huge context menus.

For users of Rider / Intellij, it is what you get when you press `shift + shift`

https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2020/05/when-the-shift-hits-the-fan-search-everywhere/

 

My gut reaction was that you can already do this by setting up whatever CI/CD system your preference is towards. My follow up reaction was, ok, can Unity build a basic one into the Editor for people who know nothing about devops? And would that be worth it?

And my gut feel now that I'm typing it is that the complication could come from building with the same project source that the user is also mucking around with.

Probably covered earlier in the thread @Lo-renzo linked, but I'm pretty certain that's not the issue. I'm pretty sure the compilation part already happens asynchronously. The slow part is removing the old version of the compiled code from the Editor (and all threads) while it's using it, replacing it with the new one, and transferring across all of the data it was using without breaking anything.

 

You are so right, I don't know what I was thinking

I guess the 2nd wave has been way more "real" to me than the first which I spent having fun at home with my kids.

Ouch, doesn't "sound" funny. Glad you're in one peice.

 

I think one of the editor's problem is that a LOT of stuff is done on the main thread. We all have multicore processors now, the editor should make use of that. Including when compiling scripts, baking lights, occlusion, etc... so that nothing blocks or slows down the editor.

I have a large project and up until yesterday was still working on an i5 2500k... it was hell. Literally half my time was wasted compiling, crashing, reloading scripts, entering play mode... even exiting it was a pain.

At one point we were even stuck with collaborate... OMG. That nearly killed me and the project with it. I'm glad that's behind us and that I was finally able to put my hands on a 5900x.

 

I agree with a lot of the issues in this thread-

As someone who loads a lot of humanoid animations for cutscenes I wish the dialog for loading animation clips had a preview of the animation at the bottom of the window where the name and path is displayed-



It seems like a huge waste of space for the name and path of the clip

When I'm browsing for animations to load into an animation clip for a cutscene I have to search/preview them using the project window, then I have to click the load animation clip button and remember the name of the one I was previewing or keep it active in the project window to load it. It's a real hassle and slows down production(I'm making films with Unity)