Open / close canvas, on click from different 3d objects, and switches if necessary

Unity Engine
1

Hi all,

I am sorry if this a stupid request but I think I am not understanding how to do this thing gracefully

I have several 3d objects in my scene, like characters. They are at different part of the scene.

When you click on them I want to have a pop-up canvas showing on top of them , showing their stats, health, etc.

The canvas are a prefab. And a script takes some parameters from the object clicked on in order to show the right information.

When you click, for the first time, on a 3d objects of course it shows you (setActive(true)) the panel. But then, if you click on a new one, it closes (setActive(false)) the other one, and open the new one .

This is where I am stuck.

To code the fact that :

  • If a canvas is already open , close it first, then open the new one. How to find which canvas is open ? Search by object name ? Or should I tell to deactivate all.
  • if you click on the same object, do nothing (as the panel is already open)

Maybe I should use a switch statement ?

Should I put all my pop-up UI canvas in a Pop-upmanager script, use a switch statement in an function that waits for a click function coming from the 3d objects scripts…???

Thank you a lot ! Hope it is clear !

2

Is the data similar enough to be presented by the same popup? I would just have one panel on one canvas and change the data around, hiding and showing the (one) popup as appropriate.

3

No need to close it unless you are animating it popping in and out. You could just have a init method, set it’s position, text ect when calling the init method and enable it if it is not already active.

4

Yes similar data

I think I have a prefab, I just instantiate the panel for each unit when selected…

But the position is different ( hovering on each 3d objects)…

But the thing is that , a normal state of the game is without any panels showing on top of these 3d items… So they have to close at some point …

My issue is knowing each last panel is still open (if any) and closing it before opening the new one somewhere else

5

Yes they are popping out

Think of it like , on a board game, if I select a unit, then I have this hovering info panel showing up on top of the unit…

And

The thing is that , a normal state of the game is without any panels showing on top of these 3d items… So they have to close at some point …

6

Why don’t you just move the panel to match the selected item’s position and only keep track of one? Having a new tooltip panel for every single possible interactable item is way overkill.

If you absolutely have to though, just add a static reference to your controller.

class PopupController : MonoBehaviour
{
   private static PopupController lastSelected = null;

   public void OnShow()
   {
      // hide the old one:
      if(lastSelected != null)
      {
         lastSelected.Hide();
      }

     // set this one as the last selected
      lastSelected = this;
   }
}