My team has made an application in Unity3D with MRTK for the Hololens 2. Our main menu inside the application does not use a Canvas, but includes Quads to display pictures and Text Mesh Pro's 3D text fields. I have found that, while this menu is open, several elements like the top-left corner picture and part of the text fields are jittery when you hold your head steady. When you nod your head, the affected parts of the text seem to lag behind so that they end up lower or higher than the text that remains steady.
The cutoff point between stable and unstable text is always the same. There is a central area that is stable. Text that is too high, or too far to the left or right in unstable. The division is in the middle of the letters (For example, the top-most part of the capital letter S is unstable, while the smaller letter m is stable.) It does not matter if the viewport is centered on the center or the side of the menu. Other objects in the menu, such as buttons, that are further outside the center, are still stable.
I'm aware that there can be problems with hologram stability, but I do not understand why only part of the same textfield are affected. I can't include screenshots or videos because the effect doesn't show up in screencaptures of the Hololens.
Does anyone know what could be causing part of an object to be unstable in the Hololens, and what might be done about it?
Edit: I made an edited screenshot to try and recreate the visual effect seen in the Hololens:
It seems to be related to depth reprojection. Text doesn't write to the depth buffer by default, which can lead to instability. MRTK have some tips, including specifically for TMPro:Depth buffer sharing in Unity
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I'm new to Unity and to game development in general.
I would like to make a text-based game.
I'm looking to reproduce the behavior of an instant messenger like messenger or whatapp.
I made the choice to use the Unity UI system for the pre-made components like the rect scroll.
But this choice led me to the following problem:
I have "bubbles" of dialogs, which must be able to grow in width as well as in height with the size of the text. Fig.1
I immediately tried to use VectorGraphics to import .svg with the idea to move runtime the points of my curves of Beziers.
But I did not find how to access these points and edit them runtime.
I then found the "Sprite shapes" but they are not part of the "UI",
so if I went with such a solution, I would have to reimplement
scroll, buttons etc...
I thought of cutting my speech bubble in 7 parts Fig.2 and scaling it according to the text size. But I have the feeling that this is very heavy for not much.
Finally I wonder if a hybrid solution would not be the best, use the
UI for scrolling, get transforms and inject them into Shape sprites
(outside the Canvas).
If it is possible to do 1. and then I would be very grateful for an example.
If not 2. 3. 4. seem feasible, I would like to have your opinion on the most relevant of the 3.
Thanks in advance.
There is a simpler and quite elegant solution to your problem that uses nothing but the sprite itself (or rather the design of the sprite).
Take a look at 9-slicing Sprites from the official unity documentation.
With the Sprite Editor you can create borders around the "core" of your speech bubble. Since these speech bubbles are usually colored in a single color and contain nothing else, the ImageType: Sliced would be the perfect solution for what you have in mind. I've created a small Example Sprite to explain in more detail how to approach this:
The sprite itself is 512 pixels wide and 512 pixels high. Each of the cubes missing from the edges is 8x8 pixels, so the top, bottom, and left borders are 3x8=24 pixels deep. The right side has an extra 16 pixels of space to represent a small "tail" on the bubble (bottom right corner). So, we have 4 borders: top=24, bottom=24, left=24 and right=40 pixels. After importing such a sprite, we just have to set its MeshType to FullRect, click Apply and set the 4 borders using the Sprite Editor (don't forget to Apply them too). The last thing to do is to use the sprite in an Image Component on the Canvas and set the ImageType of this Component to Sliced. Now you can scale/warp the Image as much as you like - the border will always keep its original size without deforming. And since your bubble has a solid "core", the Sliced option will stretch this core unnoticed.
Edit: When scaling the Image you must use its Width and Height instead of the (1,1,1)-based Scale, because the Scale might still distort your Image. Also, here is another screenshot showing the results in different sizes.
I'm quite new to Unity, so I'm sorry if this is a basic question. I've been trying to set up the UI for a mobile game, but I'm not quite sure how to make the UI lock it's position, no matter the screen size. I've tried using anchors (though I don't fully understand how to use them properly), I've tried using a canvas scaler, I've looked at the Unity document and I just can't seem to find an answer. The buttons are off screen/half off the screen when I build the game to my device/switch screen sizes in the game view. Does anyone know how to fix this?
You can set your anchor point by selecting the UI object (such as a button) and then clicking here and selecting the right anchor point. You can also press down shift to set the pivot and/or alt to move the object to that point at the same time. The object should now be anchored to that point and keep its position even if the resolution is changed. You can set a precise position from the inspector, too. Simply adjust the Pos X and Pos Y variables. It will still adhere to the anchor point.
Note that you might have to play around with the Canvas object's UI Scale mode and its settings to get the right setup.
I've run through an entire fault tree trying to diagnose this, with no joy.
I'm writing a 2D card game in Unity/C#. I have four panels (one per player) that hold the cards, name, discard pile, etc. for each player. I need to have a pop-up dialog panel come up over the player panels when the user wants to change options. For some reason, I cannot get the pop-up to appear over the card sprites (it does appear over the other elements: interior panels, images, text boxes, etc.). I've tried adjust the Zpos for the dialog box panel, but nothing changes. That's problem one, but it leads to a more worrisome issue.
The bigger issue is this. Since the options panel won't display in front of the players' cards, I thought I'd just deactivate the player panels, display the dialog, then deactivate it and re-activate the player panels when it's closed. That works fine: for three of the panels. The fourth panel comes back on in its previous state, but the graphics on it will no longer update.
I've debugged and discovered the new cards are being handled correctly (sprite names changing, etc.), the discard pile is being updated, the player's name is being highlight/de-highlighted as the game progress, but none of it is appearing! It's visually stuck in the state it was when I deactivated it.
Investigating further, I've determined the error crops up anytime I deactivate and the re-activate that player's panel, whether I do it via the inspector (attaching those events to a button click), or do it in-line in script. I don't even have to open the options dialog box: I put SetActive(false/true) statements in my game code and it immediately kills the graphics updating for that panel. The sprites, text, etc. remain as they were when I deactivated and will not update.
player3Obj.gameObject.SetActive(false)
player3Obj.gameObject.SetActive(true);
Doing that to the other three panels has no effect and works fine. I see nothing different about panel 4. In fact, I can deactivate only one of its card sprites, and when I turn it back on, it is now "stuck" and won't update, even though all the other cards in that player's hand will. Same if I deactivate/re-activate one of the text fields. It will no longer update, but everything else does.
I've got no exception errors or anything, but this looks to me like some kind of memory problem, though I can't imagine what. It shows up in my Android build, no it's not specific to my machine. I'm throwing this question out there hoping someone has seen something similar.
If nothing else, maybe someone can tell me how to get my options panel to display over the card sprites. But I hate to leave a problem undiagnosed: they have a way of coming back and biting.
Update
Here's the code that isn't getting displayed. The cardBackSprit values are updating correctly, as is the gameObjectSprite, but the image onscreen isn't changing:
void DrawCardBitmap2(int Player, int cardSpot, int cardIndex)
{
string spriteObjectName;
spriteObjectName = "Sprite_Player" + Player + "_" + cardSpot;
gameObjectSprite = GameObject.Find(spriteObjectName);
gameObjectSprite.GetComponent<SpriteRenderer>().sprite = cardBackSprite;
}
There's a lot to unpack here. Let's break down your post into a series of questions:
1. I cannot get the pop-up to appear over the card sprites
It sounds like you're using the UI Canvas in Unity to handle your info panels for your players, but gameObjects for other elements. This is good, but the UI Canvas' sorting order is a bit different from standard game objects.
UI elements in the Canvas are drawn in the same order they appear in the Hierarchy. The first child is drawn first, the second child next, and so on. If two UI elements overlap, the later one will appear on top of the earlier one.
In order for your pop-up to appear above other elements in your canvas, they need be be higher in your scene's Canvas hierarchy.
Important to note: Canvases set to any Screen Space render mode will render over other game objects in the scene. Canvases set to World Space will render in their world position in the scene. The only render mode that uses Z Position to choose sorting order is World Space, but this is not my recommended solution to your problem.
My recommended solution:
Break your UI into multiple different canvases. Specifically, move your pop-up to a different canvas and place it higher in the scene hierarchy than your card sprites. When you enable/disable or move the pop-up, it will now appear over the card sprites.
2. Four panels (one per player) that hold the cards
From context and some of your code, it sounds like you have SpriteRenderers in your UI Canvas. This is known to be a complex rendering problem. Common advice involves using 2 cameras for rendering, and use camera depth to raise sprites over UI elements. However, redesigning your UI canvas is probably simpler.
3. Using GameObject.Find and complex strings at runtime
GameObject.Find is not performant, and it's not robust. It looks through all elements in the scene and returns the first object it finds with that name.
This poses a few problems:
You cannot have game objects with the same name anywhere in your hierarchy, even if they are nested in different places.
CPU cycles are wasted searching through all objects.
Hidden dependencies on object names that only show up during runtime.
Here's a great blog post on some better practices. I recommend using the [SerializeField] attribute and configuring it via inspector.
4. Canvas isn't updating when objects inside of it change
You can consider invoking Canvas.ForceUpdateCanvases() in LateUpdate(). This is more of a hack than an actual solution, but if this solves your problem it is likely an issue with canvas rendering. If this does not solve your problem, then this problem is likely elsewhere in your code that is currently not provided.
A canvas performs its layout and content generation calculations at the end of a frame, just before rendering, in order to ensure that it's based on all the latest changes that may have happened during that frame. This means that in the Start callback and the first Update callback, the layout and content under the canvas may not be up-to-date.
I need to move an image down through canvas so that its central point would be where is now its top edge. It makes some 50 points, but if I decrease y by 50, it moves to different part of the screen on devices with different screen size. I guess, it's because my main canvas is set to scale with the screen size. So I suppose I need to manually divide the number 50 by my screen height and then code to multiply by Screen.height? Isn't there a more convenient way to move UI objects?
Allow me a second question: Do you think it is even wise to make a game purely on canvas? My game is simple 2D, only slightly animated and contains many layout elements, so I decided to go for it, but I have hard time to grasp the UI position rules.
you may have the problem of the anchoring.
Unity UI totally depends on the Anchoring, if you have got right anchoring there is no issue.
For example. if you anchored something at the Center than changing left and right value moves them according to the center anchor.
for clear visualization, you can paste a screenshot of the behavior.
I'm making a presentation of someone using the Hololens that is duplicated on a big screen. For duplication it uses the device portal's mixed reality capture option (live stream).
I need to render a tool tip to be visible only to the person with the Hololens - but invisible to the people watching it on the big screen.
From what I've seen, the only difference in rendering between the two is that I can render black on the live stream (if I omit rendering the alpha channel) with it being invisible on the Hololens due to the way it's screen works. This is unfortunately useless to me, as I need to show something to the Hololens viewer, not big screen viewers.
Any ideas on how can I make part of the content visible only to the hololens user?
I can't use spectator view due to other constraints (I need first person view).
Found a solution, not the best one possible, but usable.
I render the tooltip objects only to the right eye, as only the contents of the left eye are included in the live view.
For anyone wondering, in a shader, there is a magic value of unity_StereoEyeIndex that has the value 1 or 0, depending on the eye. To use this value, it first needs to be set up.
If anoyone has an idea how can I do this without sacrificing stereoscopy, I'll be happy to hear about it.