Unity UI | somethings that could and should be better.

My morning coffee hasn't kick in yet and I'm too lazy to proceed coding or modeling so I decided to blame Unity for that and write this rant about things that frustrates in otherwise great software.

Moving and rotating MainCamera
There should be way to move and edit Main Camera (game view camera) in "fps" mode. I mean in a same way you move Scene view camera. One solution could be that you set Scene view camera to Main Camera, and in game camera would be there where you left it. I understand that in games most camera movement/placement is done by scripts, but sometimes I just want to make simple test scene with static camera in right place. Also if I ever make cut scenes or something with animated camera, I will find away to do it in external software.

Navigation in 3D space
Unity uses alt+LM/MM/RM for that, which is not good or bad. But I believe that for many of us Unity is not primary software and there should be option to change 3D navigation controls. I'm used to other software, and every time I jump from it to Unity I move wrong way, push wrong keys.

No easy way to set GameObjects invisible or lock them
I would be great to have eye and lock symbol in hierarchy window besides GameObjects that would affect only Scene window. So I could hide something in scene for editing purposes, but it would be still seen in game. Or lock something, example ground, which you probably don't want to move much but still got selected all the time while you are trying to place waypoints or tiny little flowers.

Gizmos for empty GameObjects
I know I can make handles and Gizmos by script but found it easier to add Mesh Filter&Renderer to my empty GameObjects and disable it after editing. That way I can select them easily and use W/E/R for moving etc. It would be great to have "Add Component >> Gizmo/Handles >>> basics, move, rotate etc.."

Editing in play mode and keep changes
This is something I'm learning to avoid, but I have made huge changes to scene while in play mode; added GameObjects, deleted GameObjects, filled arrays, trim controls and so on, only to find out that I was in play mode and everything is lost. Would love to have menu that ask to keep or revert changes after stopping play mode .

GameObject placement
When I drag prefab or mesh or anything from Project to Hierarchy, position where it goes in scene feels pure random; (0,0,0) would be fine for me. I'm getting bored to always manually reset position.


Now my coffee is working so I get back to coding.
Have a colorful Autumn.

 

There is a menu command GameObject->AlignWithView (CTRL+SHIFT+F) which can be used to align the game camera with the editor camera. Maybe not exactly what you want but I think it's good enough.

Some more options to customize editor keys would be nice.

What you can do is assign GameObjects to layers which can be hidden individually(Button "Layers" in the top right corner of the editor)

Some kind of default Gizmo if no other is drawn (method OnDrawGizmos not implemented) would be nice. It could be hidden in the Gizmo selection by default.

I've seen tools on the asset store for this. However a solution inside Unity would be nice: In play mode a right click on a value or component in the inspector should show a command "Apply to scene", similar to the "Revert to prefab" context command.

Yeah, even after some years now I still haven't figured out the logic behind this...
The "Reset" option in the context menu of the Transform component at least make things easier.

 

GameObject placement -
GameObjects are placed at the pivot point of the camera. So if you press F on something and the camera zooms over to it, that will be where GameObjects are placed.

 

2 more things:

Can't find file extensions anywhere, easily.
I had to name my files like; TestCubeFBX.fbx, TestCubeFBX2010.fbx, TestCubeLXO.lxo because Unity kindly hide extensions from me. Redundant? I think it would be better to use just one file type for assets, but I had to test which works. And also I sometimes forget to change to right file type when exporting, so it would be nice to see extension easily in Unity.


Unity breaks my Windows taskbar.
Could be my windows, but no other software does it at moment. I usually use alt-tab, but not always, and then it's frustrating to move my hand to keyboard