GetComponent() returns the outline text effect instead of the shadow text effect!

Questions & Answers
1

Basically I’m using both an outline (Outline) and a shadow (Shadow) on my UI.Text. When I try to fade both the shadow and the outline I use:

Shadow shadow = GetComponent<Shadow>();
Outline outline = GetComponent<Outline>();

Those lines will make both the shadow variable and the outline variable bound to the SAME Outline component in the game object! How do I fetch the shadow component?

3

Well, that is a common issue when inheritance is used. The Outline class is actually derived from the Shadow class. So an Outline actually is also a Shadow. Therefore GetComponent<Shadow>() will face two instances on the same object. As far as I remember Unity now searches through the components in the same order they appear in the inspector. So a “hacky” solution is to swap the order of the two components in the inspector. That should fix the issue, though not in a nice way.

The best and most robust solution is: Do not use GetComponent but assign the reference through the inspector. If that’s not possible for some reason to make the code more robust you would need to use GetComponents<Shadow>() (note the plural), iterate through the components and filter out the right components by doing some type checks.

Shadow shadow;
Outline outline;
foreach(var c in GetComponents<Shadow>())
{
    Outline o = c as Outline;
    if (o == null) // component is not an Outline
        shadow = c;
    else // component is an Outline
        outline = o;
}

That doesn’t really look very nice but will work no matter what order the two components have.

2

is this U need?

public GameObject Outline;

    Outline.GetComponent<Outline>().effectDistance = new Vector2(3, 3);
    Outline.GetComponent<Outline>().effectColor = Color.black;