How to design character HUD (Unity UI) if multiple characters?

Unity Engine
1

In my ongoing hobby project, the player has a choice of one of four characters: cat, dog, owl or turtle. Each one of the characters exist as a prefab and need HUD info such as health, number of items collected, etc. Currently, each character prefab has their own UI canvas as part of the prefab. What I would like to know is: do I keep it like that or do I create one canvas for a single HUD shared by all characters? I suspect that I should rather use a single UI canvas? It is easy enough when the scripts and UI are on the character prefab, but it is a nightmare to change stuff 4x each time I tweak something.

But if I should rather use a single shared UI, how can i set up the HUD so it uses the info from each character? I have been looking for HUD tutorials, but not had much luck. I am sure I am just trying to over-complicate things. Assistance would be greatly appreciated.

I added images of my current (VERY!!) basic HUD. It still needs to be expanded to add skills, power, etc but thought I’d sort out my design before going to far.

1911221--123274--UICat.PNG
1911221--123274--UICat.PNG879×581 470 KB

1911221--123275--UITurtle.PNG
1911221--123275--UITurtle.PNG804×430 346 KB

2

Hi LadyAth,

What you could do is make a manager for your players canvases, containing information on what needs to be changed per character. Then when the game starts, it’ll inherit the selected information from a script instead, changing a default image to the one you select (like the players avatar picture like in your screenshots)

If you need more assistance on this, feel free to PM me and I could make an example project for you.

Hope this helps!

3

A manager sounds like a much better approach, but as you might gather, I am a bit lost. I will definitely send you a PM, thank you.