Hi all! Here is a complete comparison video of ProBuilder 5 vs ProBuilder 6, to help everyone change workflows. I get the friction there, but once you’ve tried this mixed with a few other toolsets, I think you’ll love it!
Please let me know if you’d like any extra details, or if you are an Asset Store developer who would like help making your toolset equally integrated with the new Contextual Tooling system!
I’ve been in a similar situation with my tools for MicroVerse. Personally I prefer the less clicks the better. Mine is built on context. Has advantage and disadvantage. Advantage: you see the only options available, ie context sensitive filter. Disadvantage: You need to know which gameobjects to click to know which options exist.
Few comments on the video:
Either way, excellent additions showing the direction 
yes integrating into a menu from both ends makes it far more confusing
Thanks @Rowlan !
@bugfinders , can you clarify?
I think this is meant:
It’s confusing.
@Rowlan nailed exactly that, its been merged into another menu but both ends, and so its easy to not realise you need to click on the top one to get the face, node etc selection etc, what if we want the probuilder at the top?/bottom… frankly anywhere else?
Ah. This is actually really important, since all toolsets (including Asset Store/etc) can use this entire system:
Top: shows any available Tool Contexts. Needs to be at the top because this controls all the below tools, and the scene in general.
Middle: shows any available Component Tools (if working on Game Objects) or specialized tools (if using a Tool Context to work on non-GameObjects, eg vertices/spline points/etc). This needs to be in the middle because it’s controlled by the Tool Context, and can change at any time (eg, a Tool Context might even remove all these and/or add different tools).
Bottom: Interactive Creation Tools. These are always available, because they are creation - no context/selection/etc is needed to activate them.
I get that this feels a bit arbitrary now, but as more and more toolsets pick it up, it’ll make sense in that you always know exactly where to look for which tools/etc are available.
On the other hand … yes, I’d love to make it 100% customizable. That’s always best, as long as you assume the risk and responsibility 
Hello!
In no mean sense, I’ve tried Probuilder 6 for a good few days and I am sad to say I actually hate it 
There’s a lot that’s downgraded in quality of life in the transition between 5 and 6, and it’s not old-experience based nor rose-tinted.
The first thing is that instead of having a palette to pick from when creating shapes, we now have to click and drag, this brings multiple problems:
Instead of choosing at ease, we have a smaller hit-area on screen to pick probuilder creations.
It takes more than a click to pick what we need, the drag also changes in length/coordination depending on which shape we want, we we can’t rely on hand-eye coordination until we are already dragging, slowing the process.
Any misclick would get you a wrong shape and require going entirely back to the click & drag, or worse, move the context menus so its no longer in the same place, errors punish you more.
It’s impossible to dock “create shape” properly, and there are no reminders of what options are available.
Without the create shape details, its far harder to customize the created shape, you could properly and perfectly configure it before you create the shape if you want exact numbers. Now that’s far harder to do.
As Rowlan mentioned, I too prefer a menu that’s docked in a consistent place that I can always rely on. The removal of that is a reduction in quality of life.
In general, the context menu introduction feels very poor and unreliable, I want to be able to pick my options by reading what they are and knowing where they are, instead of guessing what the icon of the week is and under which menu sleeve its hiding this time.
I’d also like to point out that nowhere does the shape selection menu actually hints you need to drag, that is entirely built on your own tribal knowledge.
Left click doesn’t open up the options.
Right click doesn’t open up the options.
Middle click doesn’t open up the options.
Dragging within the button doesn’t open up the options.
There is no animation that pushes to an ‘out’ side.
There is no animation that hints its a drawer that will open.
There is no tooltip telling you to drag when you hover over it.
The only thing you get is a static corner arrow that you can’t click and is not explained.
It even mismatches the instructions on the documentation, though I wager that’s because Pro Builder 6.0.1 doesn’t have any.
(says what’s new in probuilder 5, when we’re in fact on 6, and none of the ‘creating shape’ pages show context menus)
Basically, zero discoverability for the features shown in the video video means extremely poor new user or upgrading user experience. Not convertible from previous probuilder version tutorial videos on the internet either. I watched a friend who never used probuilder before, struggle with this for far longer than they should have.
It’s nice to think and believe people can like something, and I hope that’s where we’ll end up with probuilder, but I don’t think that’s where we are.
If I had to rank the usability of ProBuilder 5 vs ProBuilder 6,
ProBuilder 5 would get a 8,
ProBuilder 6 would get a 2 at best.
This extends with a few other inconveniences introduced in the shift,
Though given how many times you pointed out bugs in the video I now don’t even know whether to critique some things as user quality reduction or straight up unstable versioning.
Is there a reason it’s not marked experimental?
As for my own top thoughts and wishes for ProBuilder:
I want to see text for features, Icons make everything worse instead of better in regards to actually executing actions.
I want to have the new shape palette docked with its customization options visible again. We have palettes in photoshop etc for increased usability. Imagine the horrors of having a palette be only contextual. (On a side note, its fun to stare at the vertex colors palette, that you can dock…)
Unrelated to the feedback between 5 & 6, having some more options in how the UVs are set up specifically for the rounded objects would be great. e.g. Stair UV aligning to curve.
Thank you for making this thread, and the video! I want to stress that this is feedback for probuilder, nothing aimed directly at the effort shown here
Here here, oh and PS bring proper progrids back they are just too useful!
You can still use much of that old method if you like - after clicking once on the “Draw Shape” tool, you can set all the params from the Shape Details overlay that appears (just like the old tool).
Regarding shape choice, hmm, I think right-click should actually open and keep open that menu, which I believe would solve your issue? No more drag required, essentially the same as before (click once, then click a second to pick type). I’ll check with the team on that.
You might need to explain this more for me? This version is the first one to actually have a consistent setup. Before, it was a mish/mash of locations, especially across different tools. Vs now, regardless of what tool you use:
Ah, yes, this is apparently missing a tooltip, that’s a bug. Not that a tooltip solves it entirely. The other half is going to be pattern adoption - this “fly out” menu is a new thing for Unity (although common in other apps, generally with the same corner arrow). Maybe that wasn’t clear - this isn’t a unique bit of UI, it’s something everyone is encouraged to use, and over time (plus with proper tooltips) it’ll be no different than, say an item in the Hierarchy (which also can be dragged, but has no indication of this - everyone just expects it).
Yup, I think noted elsewhere, the docs are still WIP since U6 is a preview at this point. Hopefully those will be complete soon
I get the feeling here, but do keep in mind this is brand new, and shipped only with a preview version of Unity. New things are always going to be different, and there will be friction (such as lack of docs, hence the video above).
It’s not just like the old tool - though I can confirm that it appears, it appears at an entirely different corner, instead of right by the selected shape. For how I had my editor when I tried it, the actual shape selection is on the top left of scene view, while the parametric settings are on the bottom right of scene view. As far away as possible. Pretty reduced visibility and extra hassle to change anything before use. (Would it be problematic to still show the full tool palette on the Shape Settings interactive tool?)
I’ve taken the time to do a sanity check, here’s the ProBuilder 5.0.7 on 2023.1.3f1
You can see the palette + shape creation details all stay until I stop placing new shapes, so unless that’s a bug you definitely had a consistent setup before?
The toolbar is docked to the left and is always there, with most of the options visible to me regarding probuilder is what I meant. I can’t find any way to make it show up in ProBuilder 6, though I did listen you saying you’re working on the vertex colors in the video so I assume you’re working on that as a whole. I do still prefer written text options. (Tiny icons at 4k 27inch resolution monitors don’t do much to help)
It was clear in terms of 'more options, but no normal action worked. I checked for sanity, and in those other apps, even going as far as pre-2020’s photoshop, right click does open all your options. Probuilder 6’s (or I guess, Unity’s new toolbars as a whole?) do not.
On that note, Photoshop also lets you choose which tools are stacked under the same menu button, so you can extract all the tools you like out to always be visible.
Paint.NET also treats them as dropdowns that open up their options on a left click.
It seems Blender is the tool that matches the “hold left button to see options”? It also lets you display button names - and to resize the area available (to increase button size), I hope you will adopt that!
I also want to point out that consistency with the dropdown arrow like other existing tools deserves improvements too, they open by left click on the arrow, which is an event smaller hitbox, and don’t open on a drag, and don’t have highlights separate from the primary button that doesn’t expand the menu… lots of user-hints problems. The problem comes with them all being small arrows and you’d think they have similar use at first, though 1 is admittedly on a corner and aligned diagonally as opposed to cradinally downwards and higher up. Hard to tell at quick glance.
As a note, I’ve tried making a ProBuilder 6 equivalent of the ProBuilder 5 video to show the differences, but bumped into various usability bugs. for example, I can’t create non-unit-sized objects, holding ‘ctrl’ lets me pick the spawn precisely (as opposed to precise being the default, which - snapped is fine) but I can’t place precise shaped objects at all unless explicitly specified through the bottom right interactive menu ahead of time. Is this an enforcement or a bug? Also numerous undo problems that keep the objects in the scene (extremely convoluted example)
Hmm, that’s not making sense to me
That’s the same as PB6 - each item can be placed wherever you like. Perhaps you had previously moved the PB5 Shape Settings overlay closer to where you docked the PB5 Actions Panel? If so, you can do that same placement again, no problem.
Unfortunately yes. We had numerous reports of confusion when folks would click those buttons and get unexpected results. Lots of back and forth and testing, removing the confusion was our determination to optimize for the 80%.
Hmm, it seems we are talking about different things. The video helps, thanks!
Maybe the difference we are speaking about here, is that I’m meaning “consistency across all of Unity”, vs “consistency across ProBuilder”. I understand that it might seem best for all of PB items to be in one place, it’s just not scalable or an efficient use of space. Not scalable because, every single toolset needs to have it’s own panel (tons of boilerplate dev work, QA, maintenance, docs, and memorization + management from users). Not efficient because, well same thing. Each unique panel takes up it’s own space, even when not useful, and often displays a mix of usable and non-usable things. The goal is for every custom tool developer to be able to make seamlessly integrated toolsets, no more need for re-creation of basic stuff (like custom monolithic panels, eg PB5).
I hear that you like this, but you have also said you like things closer, yes? With PB6, instead of moving your mouse/eyes all the way across the monitor to that panel, and perhaps scrolling it up/down, you can simply right-click in the view, and have an exact list of all possible actions, right at your mouse. One extra click, yes, but massively faster and removes all potential for confusion over what can/can’t be done.
I did? I don’t think so … oops if I did. Nothing happening on that now, though we’d love to yes. Same for materials/etc. Right now, we have only overhauled the surface level - creation, selection, and manipulation of elements. All the separate panels (vertex, material, UV, etc) were left alone, and can be accessed via "Tools > ProBuilder > Editors > … ". This is sad, and yes we want to continue the work ASAP
Agreed (did I forget to mention that? My bad). I think that’s either a bug or a missed feature. Checking in with the team.
Ah, that sounds like a snapping situation. Is the Grid Snapping turned on? (magnet icon in below image). If so, it will always be on as you are saying. CTRL inverts this (so that you can have whichever workflow you prefer - always snap and occasionally don’t, or never snap and occasionally do).
For undo issues, I’d super appreciate if you could file bugs on those. I know it’s a bit of a pain, but it really is the best way to get those seen and fixed ASAP. Thanks if you can!!
Yeah I hate to pile on, but the truth is even on a personal level I had to square the fact that as a programmer creating tools with the overlay system is cleaner, more elegant and gives you a wealth of free features by being in the ecosystem… but when I take my dev hat off and use my own little tools… I hate them. I can’t find them, I don’t remember the icons I picked and generally am used to contextual blindness of the sea of small toolbars.
The beauty of usability design is it isn’t a mystery. You show it to people and watch, and universally people who have years of probuilder experience, years of unity experience and who have programmed their own tools using that system and know how it works… don’t like it. That should indicate that if there is that much friction for the well informed, you are likely to see a lot more friction from the uninitiated.
The truth is, context based menus sounds great, in practice what it means is your ui is shifting sand with no landmarks.
Probuilder is a powerful tool and the way most of us learned it was by quite frankly…staring at the screen. You click a thing and look at the words available. The colors was an elegant ui decision because it let us see all things that can be done… but highlights the ones that are relevant in this context. letting you know that if you want to do something… you might be in the wrong context. now, unless you know both the thing you want to do, and the context you must be in to do it, you can’t even search your options because you have to already be in the right context to even see whats available!
Not to mention, while power users will be thinking in terms of hot swapping modes, most people don’t. Good design is driven by usecase. you may think that “edge tools should show up when I am in edge mode”. That sounds right.
In practice people think in terms of I am in “box blockout mode” or “window making mode” and as a result, they want a disparate set of available tools and options tied to solutions to problems not venn diagram of availability.
I 100% understand that on paper consistent design should be easier. In practice though the optimal design is NOT the optimal design. Any book on user experience design will tell you, the right design is the “rule of expectation”. It is sometimes “don’t make me think” or “rule of least surprise” but there are seas of studies showing how a sub-optimal design that people get, is better than an optimal design that people dont.
Not to mention the fact that people historically don’t actually use menus. Weird sentence right? Well a long time ago microsoft did a study where they turned off the default auto save for Word for some of their new users as a ux experiment. It was still there. in settings, auto save. But as you can imagine they got a sea of bug reports because
expectation is king.
Now, I 100% understand the reaction that you must be thinking “they just don’t like change”. I can see how this looks alarmist, but the fact is I won’t use Unity6… because of this. I actively hate it. Now, having watched your video I am willing to give it a try again and see if with more esoteric runic knowledge it is more intuitive but I am willing to bet it wont be. Why? because I always worked with labels. So already its missing the way I used to navigate.
At an absolute minimum. the idea that a single small movable icon in stack of similar icons, changing to a different small icon indicating an entire mode switch for all contextual actions … vs a static bar, with a static set of states, with one visibly being selected… surely you can see the informational difference there. The ability to glance and verify you are in the right mode. That singular thing is the canary in the coalmine.
Second to that is the whole “I learn by exploring” concept. you now have a scenario where someone could follow a tutorial, do the same steps as the person they are watching… and get entirely different menus… because one icon, somewhere on screen is slightly different.
This is not just aversion to change. It is an earnest application of gestalt theory of design. When google changed all their android icons to be “consistent” it was nice for them… but screwed over everyone with glancing reflexes as the different icons, who now have no landmarks to parse at the sea of nearly identical icons in their product line.
Homogeneity and holistic system design always sounds good. In practice, its usually just good for the designers, not for the users. Please try roleplaying as someone with no experience and empathize with the idea of solving problems using only the information available and provided to you by the ui. It’s easy as programmers and power users to see the world through a set of features. Users don’t see the world that way. they are walking in foreign woods desperately looking for signposts and help. Our old english list of directions is now a floating, moving collection of hieroglyphics that change position and shape depending on other symbols.
To clarify, in PB5 the shapes palette is right there with the tools, so once you turn on the object placement, you dont need to hang around the top left side anymore at all (in PB6’s equivalent)
I’ve tried moving the interactive panel to right near the mode selection, and I can confirm it works better, though it is a bit clunky to read with the words overlaying the placement menu, so thank you for that idea. I am concerned that it means every context menu will be there but it is conceptually better that they’re in a single place, so I’ll take it!
(show of clunk text dropdown overlaying the rest of the menu without much contrast, if it matters at all. Some shadow might help?)
The video above also confirms that, yes, it was the grid snapping going weird on me. the ctrl key still allowed proper starting placement for probuilder, but not proper sizing, which is odd. May want to look into that as a bug?
Unrelated, but didn’t know grid snapping would interact with probuilder at all, I’m going to assume the inconsistently with ctrl is the bug, but its overall a good adjustment. Is scene view grid snapping something we can poll from user code and adjust against accordingly? for overlay tooling.
In PB6, there is no option to put this whole menu, and everything is shoved into right click plus context hover, which takes more time. (As a side note, right click context menu also moves to align itself with position in screen, so its unreliable whether it will appear far or near the mouse e.g. this image)
In PB5, you have this menu. I can’t find a way to make it show up in PB6.
P.S. What is the purpose of this unclickable mesh filter icon? hovering over it just says “tools” which is the general panel’s name…
I understand the push, but disagree with the speed statement - there’s costs that make it slower when you’re in level-design trenches.
Discoverability is lower, so you’ll not be using the best tools every time due to sheer nature of not keeping them all in your mind and not having an easy reminder.
Some actions need to be repeated multiple times, its not just the extra click but the extra mouse movement. For example, mesh subdivision has to repeat the click and movement for every division.
In some ironic conjecture, I’m afraid of a future where the right click becomes massive if most tools decide to add context menus instead of toolbars. At least it luckily shows up at the bottom of the list, for better or worse (lots of mouse movement).
Thanks, hopefully this gets better.
Okay, that’s on me, you said material and UV editors, and my brain auto-filled for vertex color instead. I’d like to apologize for that. (That said, am happy if vertex colors window stays as is)
Will attempt and submit one and give you the issue number, though does sending a minimal test case project really help here?
Here’s a direct display with Unity 6000.0.0b13, ProBuilder 6.0.1-pre2, I open the project, create some cubes, and undo (ctrl+z) them all. Vertex colors get undone properly, placement doesn’t get undone, instead the cubes teleport to a new place.
Also - Thank you for the thorough commenting! That helps a lot more than the video in seeing your rationale. I can’t say I’m fully aligned with how things are, but I’ll watch for bug fixes and re-evaluate probuilder’s viability.
The menus have moved around, i dont think there are any actual options missing, they are just not where we look for them
Finding reasons doesn’t justify it always There’s no point in having the transform modification icons constantly visible. I have no information what others do, but I never ever clicked those buttons. I always use the keyboard shortcuts. For information reasons, they may make sense there, but realistically they are just a waste of screen space.
I’ve been using eg the spline tools for quite some time now. And I still don’t see the point why the spline button is on top while the rest of the spline tools is at the bottom.
You may as well make the transform buttons a horiziontal toolbar, detached from the rest.
What with Boolean operation on mesh?
I just wanted to offer my two-cents as a relatively new ProBuilder user who just updated to Unity 6. Having only used ProBuilder for a couple weeks in Unity 5, I had a really hard time getting the hang of it initially, largely because the interface for it seemed so antiquated compared to other software suites. Yes, everything was largely in the same place, but actually using it was clunky as all hell.
Once I updated to Unity 6 I was of course confused where all the ProBuilder stuff went, but only because I wasn’t expecting Unity to use right-click interfaces since it doesn’t do that for hardly anything else. Once I realized how it worked (thanks for the video), this is SO MUCH BETTER. Yes there are some quirks to work out, and I agree with some of the nitpicky feedback here, and I’m sure I’d be frustrated if I’d gotten really used to the old ProBuilder workflow and now had to re-learn it… but I just want to say that this is absolutely the way that ProBuilder should work going forward. Good job to the Unity team on these changes.
It is the change that hurts like everything. You were used to things and now all those memories are worthless it feels like learning a new tool. I agree for the most part it is better in a lot of ways. But sometimes you just want to slap it because its misbehaving. It hurts less if you werent so used to it but it also means new people now need new videos. Because none of the old ones remotely will guide them
