Looks are determined by skills of an UI artist, and not by framework. So the quesiton is about your ability to make unity look the way you want, and not about the framework.
This is not UI, just “motion graphics”, as it was already said in the other thread.
For a great UI framework (possibly one of the best available), see Qt. You literally could do anything in it. https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/
One thing you may not be understanding is usability. The editor isn’t a piece of graphical art. There are things that you have to do in order to give visual communication, to educate the user as to what something is and how its supposed to be operated, based on e.g. shapes, colors, that buttons look clickable, levels of emphasis based on what’s important and what’s not, hierarchical structure, having enough space between things, etc. These are not just a ‘look’.
These are all carefully considered forms that tell the user what they’re looking at, what it means, and how to interact with it. You can’t go too far outside of the bounds of intuitive usability signals just for the sake of it looking cool. i.e. you don’t just have a blank canvas where you can make whatever ‘art’ you like, you are creating something that humans USE and engage with and it has to be very carefully laid out and presented. Like, if you suddenly started turning buttons into something that doesn’t look “clickable enough” but looks snazzy, people will become confused.
There possibly is some leeway in making the interface a bit cooler, I mean… the dark theme is supposedly cooler, but when you start leaning towards the stuff you posted above, you really are getting into science fiction in more ways than one because it just isn’t practical and easy to operate. And as soon as usability starts being compromized and goes down the tubes in favor of ‘looking good’, ‘conversion rate’ will suffer i.e. the number of people who make progress in using it or who fall off due to frustration.
Take a look at websites or user interfaces in games and you’ll see what I mean, where someone has no clue about usability and just makes stuff to ‘look good’ but very little understanding of how people use it or what it implies by its shapes and forms and layout, causing people to get confused and stop playing the game out of frustration or whatever. It makes it just not ‘feel’ right when people can’t figure out how to use it by how it looks. Those screenshots above look kinda cool, but tell me exactly WTF that user interface is even showing and how someone would use it, except in some far-fetched made-for-movies looks-good-on-the-big-screen fantasy.
Who the hell would want all this useless visual noise in the editor?
Basically, the only things you need to draw this kind of image are:
Ability to draw sprite.
Ability to draw a line.
And that’s all you need to make this kind of visuals happen. Last time I checked editor can do both.
However, in terms of usability the pictures you linked are absolutely horrible. The only function of this wireframe junk is taking screen space while providing no useful information.
I wouldn’t want any of this in the editor. Utility is more important than looks.
No. It should be clean, simple and effective and minimal.
Also revamping the interface would mean that existing custom tools and inspectors could break or would need to be updated. Upgrades to unity in general usually mean updating game code. Having to spend dev cycles just to update tools would be a damn frustrating waste of time. For most of us Unity is a tool, not a toy. Visual fluff in the interface is not practical.
You can do that already, and people already do. And no, the game UI isn’t practical in the editor, imGUI is for the editor, but developers don’t often spend a lot of cycles doing that, as it doesn’t help ship games. But you can.
That would be a distraction and it would not contribute to actually making a game in unity.
Also, I believe someone actually already made a mod of sorts for recoloring buttons, etc. I forgot what it was called, it was mentioned couple of times last year.
Making UI - properly - is not much fun. That’s why people don’t really want to bother - it is tedious, and does not contribute to usability of your program.
By the way, speaking of great UI, this is what I use for a file manager:
So far I haven’t found anything better.
It definitely can contribute to the usability, but that said, it doesn’t take much to affect usability in a positive way. It can be as simple as making a CTA button a bright color. The examples given in the OP, are not impacting usability in a good way. But generally, the impact will be minimal for the effort involved.
I tend to make my tools a bit fancy, but not really for usability. Mostly because I like to show off, and because my consumers are usually artists who don’t spend a lot of time in unity (and also because as UIX guy, I can’t leave well enough alone.) Giving them something less Unity generic and more bold, adds to their comfort level jumping into the effort. Also, I have developed a lot of base libraries for rendering editor/inspectors over the years, (hence the similarity in look), so building some of those tools is actually really fast, because I am leveraging invested effort.
So basically you want the Editor itself to look similar to HUDs in AAA games? lol
I think the Editor has enough UI in it already. One of the big reasons I wasn’t able to connect with Unity for my game dev was the existence of the Editor to begin with. So for me definitely “no”.
Much like @neginfinity mentioned I am content with writing code in something like Notepad++. I do like the features of Visual Studio for programming though but they are a luxury not a necessity. And I see the Editor in general that way.
Though I must say as much as others seem to love the whole visual thing and working in the Editor in general I am surprised to see no support for your ideas.
Frankly, that type of UI in the editor would make my eyes bleed.
As others have said, the Unity editor is a tool not a game. While some of us only use it for a hobby and not a profession, it’s still just a tool not a game. Turning it into some kind of fancy art-heavy design would make it more difficult to use comfortably.
Take a look at Word and Excel. Microsoft doesn’t make the UI there simple because Microsoft is boring; they make the UI simple because the UI is supposed to let the user do their thing and do it’s best to get the heck out of their way.
In fact, the less you notice the UI and the more you focus solely on your content, the better.
For me, the only ease of use feature I think the Unity editor desperately needs is a way to scale all fonts up for those of us who no longer have young eyes and who don’t work on 42" monitors.
