How to make some nice custom editor windows

Unity Engine
1

I’ve got some ideas for a custom editor window, as shown below (from “2.1 Features”). I haven’t tried making one yet. Where shall I go to find some documentation/tips on how to make it snazzy?

http://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/images/unity2.1/editor.png

2

That screenshot is from this example project:
http://unity3d.com/support/resources/example-projects/animationapi

It’s not trivial, though.

Cheers,
-Jon

3

I’ve made a window very much like that for a cross-section editor in a component coming soon. A few notes about that, with the lessons I learned from my experiences:

  • You’ll need a script extended from EditorWindow. Put it in the Editor/ folder, and implement the OnGUI method. Open this window with a method like this (Javascript):
	@MenuItem("Window/Open Class Window")
	static function OpenEditor() {
		EditorWindow.GetWindow(YourClassName).Show();
	}
  • You can use GUI.Box, etc to put text and graphics in your window. There is also a (seemingly undocumented) Handles.DrawLine function (which simply takes a beginning and end-point).
  • In order to implement any sort of dragging you will definitely need to use Event.current to determine whether the window needs to be repainted and whether things need to be moved, and where. Be sure to call Repaint() if a point is being dragged.
  • Yes, this means pretty much everything about the window needs to be implemented from scratch.
4

Yep. GUI.Box, Event.current and EditorWindow.Repaint are definitely your best buddies when designing editor windows.

5

I think I’m going to postpone this for the time being, considering it does seem to be a lot of work, and I’m pressed for time currently. Thanks for helping me get a better idea of the process.