Assets XGUI - UI WYSIWYG, Visual Coding and Code generation.

WYSIWYG Tools Preview
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• Verified right clicking on "container" elements in the hierarchy and using the "Add" option works.
• Autoupdate is back on.
• Drag and Drop images to a layout to add them.
• WYSIWYG interface has been reactivated and cleaned up, and more options added.
• Data source panel "look" updated.
• Data sources not displaying field name, need to.
• Type Finder was not locating types with no namespace. IE MonoBehaviors not in a namespace
• Fixed Data Source selector, was not properly allowing you to select ANYTHING when the request type was UnityEngine.Object
• Use existing skin option was not being saved, causing layouts to always create new skins. Now it works.
• Some properties REQUIRE either value or data source, but you can switch still. This has been fixed. Requiring a specific source type will now prevent the option to change it from showing up.
• Optimized Element Toolbar - ScrollView now only displays elements buttons that are VISIBLE.

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Hey folks, know its been a couple days so I wanted to fill you in on some of the updates. Hope you like the gif. Ill try to put an updated version up tonight so you all can play with the updates and changes, and WYSIWYG tools.

 

This gif is absolutely sick:



This will be the only way to do EditorUI.

Looking forward for this to launch.

 

Indeed, I was already erect to begin with, I almost popped some blood vessels.

 

Was gonna try to put up a new demo last night however I started cleaning up so come that took longer then expected. So Im finishing that up today, and hopefully gonna get a new demo up tonight. My goeal is to try to put in the MonoBehavior template before then as well.

So does anyone have any questions on the demo so far? Or things they couldn't figure out? Or features they would like it to have?

 

Yeah, when can I put my hands on it?

 

The new demo will be up later today! 100% for sure.

I finished a large code refactor last LATE last night that makes adding new project types to XGUI a lot easier and finished fleshing out the system to load custom project types and elements. I'm spending the morning playing with it and testing and making sure everything works after such a massive refactoring.

Here is another screenshot for everyone's enjoyment.
​

 

Hey folks,

I didn't forget about the demo. Wasn't feeling well last night so I went to sleep early. Working on finishing up the settings panel now which is the last thing to do before I upload, so a couple hours more.

In the meantime here is some screenshots of settings panel.

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Hey Eevryone,

So apologies the demo has been a little over due. Between being under the weather, and fixing bugs after the code refactor for MonoBehaviours it took a little longer then I thought. However its all working, and ready for another demo.

You are now able to create MonoBehaviours UIs.

Changes

• MonoBehaviour Project type is now officially in and working!
• Refactored entire project type system to allow new types to be added much more easily.
• Element system has been revamped. Creating new element types is a lot easier, and it sets the foundation for elements that only work in one project type and filters on the toolbar.
• Fixed bug where projects paths where messing up causing them not to save in the proper directory.
• XGUI now monitors the console windows for errors within itself, and asks you if you would like to report the issue. Reporting is not done yet, website has to be setup to accept background submission.
• Element Toolbar has been revamped to support the new element system and filtering of results. This means filtering options will be available soon.
• Implement foundations of IMGUI -> Canvas UI. Basic elements(Horizontal/Vertical layouts, labels, and buttons) can be converted to Canvas UI components with the EXACT same look.
• Created main settings window and hooked up most of the settings.
• Fix WYSIWYG outline drawing for clip regions.

There is a ton of other little changes, and bug fixes that went into this, but I am awful about writing them down as I'm doing them so those are the major ones I remembered to write down.

Note

• You MUST delete the previous XGUI folder before installing the demo if you have one in your project.
• This version has changed the file format, and will not open layouts from the previous demo.

I'm gonna attempt to finish some videos and documentation up, as well as so more bug fixes, but I wanted to put this out there.

The new demo is to large to upload to the forums, so click the image below to be taken to the download page.

Download Latest Demo​

As always any and all feedback is appreciated. Hope you guys enjoy, I'm off to create some tutorials and videos and such.

 

Just discovered a bug with the wysiwyg controls if the GUISkin is not set to the XGUISkin, whoops. Fixing now and ill upload another demo shortly.

 

Hey Everyone,

Lots of work on the WYSIWYG interface overnight. I'm exhausted and going to sleep for a bit, but here is an updated demo package.

Latest XGUI Demo - 3/4/2018
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and here is a nice couple of photos.

Latest XGUI Demo - 3/4/2018​

 

Doesn't want to import, says it already is imported.
Deleted the older one a few days ago from my test project, can't say as I've seen that happen before with imports.

 

That is new to me as well. Only suggest i have is delete the old XGUI folder, and then close and re-open unity? Perhaps it has something stuck in memory?

 

No luck. The older one still imports though, no problem, but deleting or import over top, restarting,
import other assets, try again, delete those, etc... all fine.
New xgui just won't import, no errors, nothing, just says already imported.
Its a new project, 2017.3
sorry, ya changed something..

 

Hey sorry it took me awhile to respond. Had to run and do some errands today.
I double checked importing into 2017.3 with both existing and deleted previous version of XGUI, as well as new projects and I'm able to import it so this is extremely vexing.

I did some searching, and have come across other people having these issues as well with other packages.
This is the most recent one I found - https://forum.unity.com/threads/problem-with-import-unity-package.490700/

Nobody seems to know what causes it, or how to fix it, or if they figured it out they never come back to their posts with a solution.

@XCPU Im gonna create another package now and post it up, when you get a chance if you could try that one it would be greatly appreciated. Also what OS are you on? Windows, Mac, Linux?

 

@XCPU


Ok here is a new exported package. I have triple checked that this package imports into 2017.3 in a 1)New Project 2) existing Project over old XGUI install (not recommended you ll have orphan files handing out, but it works), and 3) Into an existing project after deleting the old XGUI files. Hope that fixes whatever issue.

Also for all of you checking out the demo, feedback is greatly appreciated. Good feedback, Bad Feedback, all feedback is welcome!

XGUI Demo 0.9.1 - Uploaded 4/4/2018 ​

 

Hey Everyone,

Trying to focus and finish up local variables element today, after which ill post a new demo.

 

Okay, I tried it! Time for feedback:

1) on the demo (0.9.1), after importing XGUI into an empty project, both Window->XGUI->UIElement and Window->XGUI->Settings fail with errors. After opening the settings though the button in the launcher window, the settings works. Can't figure out UIElement.

2) When starting to make an editor window (After hitting "Create" in Launcher->EditorWindow), five different windows are spawned. But a bunch of these are placed on top of each other. I got confused until I tried closing windows and found them. You should set better default positions for the windows so they're all visible.

3) This thing doesn't work:


After clicking "yes", the file dialogue pops up, and I can click "save". But that doesn't seem to do anything, it just closes the file dialogue and pops the same "Invalid Image Location" window back up. Now, this is on an empty project, so I might just be selecting built-in textures, which might have weird paths.

4) I really like the message boxes. "Yes, that's why I clicked that". "Awesome, thanks!"

5) If possible, it would be great if you could make the Editor Windows update whenever we change an element. Right now I have to click in windows to make them show my change.

6) Can't get creating an inspector to work - the "set inspetor type" (sic) button doesn't seem to do anything, so when I hit create, the system creates the same errors as if you just don't try to set a target type at all.

7) Related to the above point, buttons should either be grayed out if you haven't filled all the required fields, or you should do the thing websites do where things that needs to be filled are outlined in red. Now the UI just breaks for 6) instead of doing anything gracefull.

It's getting late, I'll see if I get more time to test it when you post a new demo. It's promising, but quite buggy - it might be that you broke a bunch of things when creating the demo version?

 

@Baste

Thank you for the feedback.

Quick question, what version of unity did you test on? and OS?

This is partially my bad, and partially apparently a bug. The UIElement shouldn't be in the menu at all. That was simply a quick access for me testing out the Experimental UI elements in unity.

As for the Settings window giving errors, that is a bug. Would you happen to have, or be able to get a copy of the error log?

Previously I had them all spawn docked, but disable it during some refactoring. Ill make sure to re-enable this.

Someone else reported this as well, it appears there is some variation occurring somewhere in the way the path is generated between unity versions. Again what version of Unity are you using?

Thanks! Its my attempt at giving XGUI a little personal touch, and messages boxes are always so boring and formal.

This is one of the areas that's getting improved as we speak. Next update should have this fixed as well. This was one of the major components of the last refactor was setting it up so the elements and projects would bubble events up to the UI when changes were made.

Hmm, when you hit that button its supposed to bring up a list op a popup window that has a list of every single type that is "inspect-able", which includes a-lot of unity built in types, so should always have something in it.

Good points, Ill look into making the creation forms a little more responsive.

I want to thank you again for taking the time to check out the demo, and giving me feedback and error reports. Its exactly why I release the demos and helps keep the motivation up.

More then likely I will have a new demo version before I crash for the night.

 

@Baste

I worked on your list of issues.

1) "UI Element" option in XGUI menu when there isn't supposed to be one.

This has been fixed, no more stray menu item.​

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2) "UI Element" option in XGUI menu when there isn't supposed to be one.

This should be fixed as will. It appears as though the unity project is still in the process of updating the asset data base sometimes if XGUI is started to quickly. Checks have been put in to make sure the appropriate files are loaded, and temporarily pause loading if they are not.​

3) At startup there are a-lot of windows, and they load up on top of each other.

This has been fixed as well. Docking has been turned back on. The below is how XGUI now starts up when you create, or load a project if the editor isn't already open.

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4) Image Location verification was messing up.

This has been fixed. The entire path handling for everything has been re-written to sanitize and make uniform all path interactions. In addition the location requirements for images has been relaxed. Previously the image needed to be in your xgui projects Resources folder, and would make a copy if it wasnt. It now allows the image to be in any resources folder. There will be a "Collect" option added later for the project which will collect all the resources for it into its own folder for export. Sadly there is no fancy image for this one.​

5) Preview Window not updating on element change.

This has been fixed. Its a little bit of a dirty hack, but it works for now until the event system if finished being hooked up.
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6) Cant get Inspector Window Types to appear

I have been unable to reproduce this. I however suspect it might be related to the same issue that was causing the settings not to load, basically unity isn't done loading/reloading but XGUI has be launched. There is now a "refresh" button in the inspector window that attempts to refresh the list of possible inspectable types when clicked. This should hopefully fix the issue.

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7) Creation Window could be more responsive/informative about issues, and properly validate everything.

This has been fixed as well. I actually spent a good deal of the time tonight working on this particular aspect. I think its much improved visually as well as in terms of use and stability. There are now information labels with tool types, as well as visual indicators which fields are valid, and error messages.

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Gonna try to test these in all the versions of unity before I get to tired. If i manage to get that far ill post a link with the latest download.

 

The version's 2017.3.0f1. I At least I think it is - I tested at home and I'm at work now. OS is Windows10.

Yeah, sorry, I should've been more specific. That menu pops up, but selecting anything in it doesn't seem to set that, the field that's supposed to show the thing I selected stays empty.

Other than that - nice fixes!

 

Afternoon folks!

Gonna do some testing on the project after last nights changes, and then if everything is good, ill upload the latest demo.

Ok, ill double check that its properly selecting, and displaying. Thanks again for the testing and feedback, its greatly appreciated and gave me the motivation boost i needed.

 

Hey folks,

So I've been testing the new demo in the various versions of unity. 2017.1 and 2017.2 seem to be fine... 2017.3 is not my friend at all. Not even the slightest.

For some reason 2017.3 seems to randomly sometimes not be finished re-loading in the assemblies and the asset database before it frees up the UI and lets the user do stuff, or lets EditorWindows start to do things. So this is causing a situation where the XGUIEditor is trying to initialize and fails because despite the files being in place, unity for some reason hasn't finished loading the assemblies and asset database and thinks they don't exist.

I can not consistently re-produce this. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. Time does not seem to be a factor either as I have let the project load and just sit for 10+ minutes before attempting to load the launcher and the problem has occurred.

I have adjusted the Launcher and the Settings window so that they should hopefully not error out under this circumstance, and just kinda momentarily hang out until the requested files can be accessed. As far as I can tell this is a 2017.3 issue only.

I will be uploading the new demo here shortly, just doing some final testing after messing with the giant headache since i woke up.

 

2017.3 is the version where assembly definition files were introduced, so assemblies being messed up for that makes sense. I've (very rarely) seen it fail to update all the assemblies correctly. Nothing that's reproducible enough for a bug report, though. You might be running into the same thing.

 

I have reproduced this! It will be fixed in the next demo coming shortly.

 

Hey got a question -

Would XGUI be usable for VR projects?

 

Hey @HeadClot88

That's a good question and something me and a buddy were talking about earlier today.

Short Answer: Yes, though not optimally yet.

Long Answer: The Canvas UI is the next project type i need to do. You can use a MonoBehavior Controller project currently to drive/control your Canvas UI but really need their own project to hook in the WYSIWYG controls and a custom preview window/controller. I already have it setup to take a layout designed in XGUI using GUISkins and connect that to an actual UI canvas element and generate the identical look which was the hardest part of everything. Now i just need to finish mapping the IMGUI elements to the canvas elements, and create the project type.

However even the Canvas UI has its limitations from my understanding when it comes to VR, or really being used as anything more then a billboard type of menu in 3d space. I've been pondering up a custom UI solution that would generate UIs to a single texture which could then be applied to a mesh, either one supplied by the user, or a generated one of a standard billboard, with custom segmentation levels to allow post generation deformation of the mesh. At this point though its little more then some very basic concept code, and a pretty detailed plan of attack in my head.

 

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to do my daily update on whats going on.

I'm still wrestling with 2017.3 and can very reliably (though not 100% of the time) reproduce the issues I'm seeing now so I'm working on putting together a project to submit with a bug report to unity as I do not think this is intended behavior. I have XGUI doing some error checking right now to catch the issue, and displays a little warning message about "You are on 2017.3 aren't you?", I could omit those and everything would seem fine but i don't want to forget about it, so in the upcoming demo if you see that, you can safely ignore it.

I've also finished up the Local Variable element which allows you to define variables within the scope of a function, which is of course much nicer then using project level variables for everything.

Besides the 2017.3 issue, everything else seems to be stable and working in 2017.1 thru 2017.3 all I'm waiting for is some reports back that the Local Variable element is working ok, and then I can post the latest demo, hopefully tonight.

 

Quick possible bug report, when trying to wysiwyg edit the size of a slider, you go to try and grab one of the corners while in edit mode, it always just grabs the slider instead of any of the handles.

Also, one simple suggestion, change this background perhaps to a darker color such as the rest? It feels so out of place, lol.

Also, I didn't see settings for it, can the grid color be changed / removed so it ends up being easier to see what it will actually end up looking like at the final result?

 

Hey @MostHated

Thanks for the feedback.

You are correct, this is a bug. What happens is the controls for the QYSIWYG are drawn after the UI elements, so certain elements like buttons and sliders are capturing and eating the mouse events before they ever get to the WYSIWYG handler.

My current plan of attack for this is to have all elements basically switch to a label that uses the appropriate style for element that is being displayed. This would in most cases identical to the real element and labels don't capture the events. The downside to this is something like a slider, the "handle" would disappear in edit mode since its technically an element in an element. So what i may end up doing is having this be the default behavior, and allowing elements to have a function on them that if present would be used for rendering when in edit mode so things like a slider could have a more customized "edit more" display to make them look identical.

Yes! You are not the first one to suggest this. The next demo has this fixed in it, as well as more of the UI has been cleaner up and made more uniform.

There is a setting for the grid color in the main settings for XGUI under the WYSIWYG section. While i added the control to adjust the color, i did forget to add the toggle to turn it on and off, but that is also in the next update. For now if you want you can either match the background color of the form or i think give it a fully transparent alpha.


The Next Update
The next update is ready. However I am transferring the domain name and host tonight or tomorrow, and the new site does not match the old one, so any download link wont carry over. So I do not want to put up a link that could go dead at any time. As soon as the transfer goes through I will post the new demo.

In the meantime if anyone comes across any other bugs or issues please feel free to let me know and Ill try to get them ironed out before I publish the next demo.

 

Success! The host has finally transferred. Setting up the 630Studios website as we speak, and setting up XGUI on its own sub-domain. Look forward to the latest later today!

 

Wheres, this demo we keep hearing about? ; P

 

Hey folks,

I wanted to apologize for never posting the update, or even an update here. I had some stuff going on IRL that left me pretty rattled and unable to really focus on anything productivity wise. Took me a couple weeks to shake it mostly off and get back to a place where I can even remotely focus on things like code.

I am however at that point now. Im doing a once over on the update, and will be posting it up within the next couple hours. The XGUI website, and 630Studios website should be back online in the next day or so as well.

Deepest apologies to anyone actively following my work for the brief disappearance, but real life had to get sorted out, hope you all understand.

Jason

 

It happens man, sorry to hear. Hopefully, things get better for you quick.

 

Thanks man, i appreciate it.

 

So I have not forgotten to post the update.

I know everything was working fine previous to my small break, and me giving everything a once over was just me attempting to be double safe. Until i loaded it in 2017.3 and an error that I have never seen before is now happening.
Attempting to quash this. It is yet again another issue related to unity changing the execution of stuff between previous versions of unity and 2017.3 grumble grumble.

 

So I'm having to rewrite a decent section of XGUIs initialization system. What worked perfectly fine in every version previous to unity 2017.3 has been nothing but a nightmare and problem after problem with unity 2017.3.

In 2017.3 they switched around a few key events and when they fire, in addition it seems that the loading of resources is now done in a separate thread or something as with semi regularity XGUI starts to load, but is unable to locate resources that are clearly in the project. This only happens in 2017.3, all previous version of unity work just fine.

grumble grumble, so today I rewrite the entire loading system.

 

Still going on the rewrite of the initialization system. Its a full re-write from the ground up

 

Hey Everyone,

I know its been awhile since the last update, but I have good new!

I have finally finished the rewrite of the initialization system, and everything seems to be working smoothly now in 2017.3. I've been testing it in 2017.3 exclusively for a few days now, and have yet to encounter any of the errors that were occurring before.

I've also added in the ability to view the public fields on variables (if they are classes) and at the click of a button automatically add one or more of the fields of the variable to the UI with the default editor field for the type (floats get a floatField, integers get an int field, etc). Created elements are named appropriately as well and have their data sources set automatically to reference the field. This greatly improves the speed of generating UIs.


I will hopefully post an updated build and some screen shots later today.

 

Thank you!
I would like to try the demo, as soon as it comes out!
Will it (eventually) work with unity 2018?

 

Hi @SixThreeZero_Studios

I wanted to get this a try, but that link navigates to 404 error

 

I don't quite understand why all of the editor creation assets seem to get really close to being finished, then just get abandoned. They are the one asset I have been wanting the most...

 

I think its a general lack of interest, none of the threads really pick up much momentum.

 

Yeah, it is rather unfortunate. More people would probably realize they really want/need it once people start to post questions, screenshots of stuff they made, etc, I bet, which would help it get some steam built up but it has to be released first so that can happen, lol. : (

 

Apologies about that. I updated my website and random forum links no longer connect in some cases. Im actually going to be uploaded the 'latest' copy here in like 20 minutes though.

Hey, the project is not abandoned. Just between my real job (Im a traveling concrete worker), real life crap, and the headache that was getting XGUI to work properly in 2017.3 things just kinda slowed down for a little bit.

As i said above ill post up the latest copy here very shortly. It should now be use-able in 2017.3 and later, which should hopefully yield some useful feedback.

and @PassivePicasso has a valid point, the lack of interest is a little underwhelming at times.

 

And here is a link to a 2017.3 package of XGUI.

2017.3: XGUI_Demo_0_9_4.unitypackage

Any and all feed back is appreciated.

 

Thanks! Will try this soon when I'm ready

 

Well it looks the like overhauling the initialization or some other updates has caused some unforeseen issues.

The GUIObjectField element is freaking out... currently looking in to this.

When editing an inspector layout, a code refresh causes the whole editor to go kerplunk!

Working on these as we speak, but would love some feedback from others.

 

Thankfully they made LTS. So you won't have to worry about it breaking again every few months if it works with 2017.4.

 

So.. I tried to load latest link in 2017.3... And it spam null exceptions

I give it a deep look. It seems to me that this is the error location:

Code (CSharp):

1. project.Settings.BaseSkinName = SkinData.SkinNames[this.NewSkinID];

I don't why. But looks like it's related from this warning (It popped up when I install XGUI on blank project):

Code (CSharp):

1.  this.Skin = (GUISkin)AssetDatabase.LoadMainAssetAtPath(path);
2.         if ((UnityEngine.Object)this.Skin == (UnityEngine.Object)null)
3.         {
4.             Debug.Log("Bet your using 2017.3 arent you? Yeah its being stupid, give it a second it doesnt want to load: " + path);
5.         }

That's strange. I looked deeper from stacktrace and it's being called from here:

Code (CSharp):

1.  [InitializeOnLoadMethod]
2. public static void EditorInitializ_XGUI()
3. {
4.    ...
5.    SkinData.RefreshSkinList();
6.    ...
7. }

Umm. U kidding me..... it's called from there.... I remember Unity calls always broken when called from there....

Anyway most of the time this is the workaround that worked for me in past projects:

Code (CSharp):

1.  [InitializeOnLoadMethod]
2. public static void EditorInitializ_XGUI()
3. {
4.    EditorApplication.delayCall += delegate {
5.       ...
6.       SkinData.RefreshSkinList();
7.       ...
8.    };
9. }

Obviously it's in compiled DLL so I can't sure it works. I think I'll try to downgrade and see if XGUI still works with that.

EDIT: Sorry being nasty (for decompiling those DLL), but I always curious when simple things broken