We are are 2022 LTS now and nobody even touched this stuff. It’s been a decade.
I am tired of not being able to read names of my content
I am tired of not being able to see icons of my prefabs
I am so tired of having objects be placed at x -151.2141023 y 2.569124e z 1.12222222
when they are pasted in the scene
I am tired of newly created objects spawning at -22, 4, 0.4, or in center of the screen, or randomly offscreen
I am tired of copy pasting objects landing at a completely random position
I am tired of pasting a perfectly centered object into a new object for it to be completely offset randomly
There is zero care for snapping or grids in general even when enabled.
Lets talk about the hierarchy:
Dragged in objects spawn at a random position at the very top of the list, sometimes first, sometimes 5th.
I cannot paste an object into another.
Folder selection is ignored when placing prefabs onto the ground
Placing prefabs into the hierarchy however gives them a terrible random position
I cannot even paste an object next to each other
Creating a empty parent dosn’t center on the child but on its parent folder
Doublicating a spawned object moves it thousands of objects apart to the very bottom of the entire scene
It is trying all possible registers to make the biggest mess in your scene as humanly possible.
This stuff hasnt been touched in a decade and if Unity made games and had to actually work with the tools, this would have been fixed many years ago. If you need a reference for a good hierarchy look at Cinema 4D or something like that. I happily list you all the things you need to know and give you a detailed list, just the impulse has to come from you.
Sorry for the sarcastic tone but this is completely insane to all be untouched for so long and its painfully frustrating.
Always insert new creations below the current selection.
Same for copy paste and ctrl-D. Respect if the selection is a folder.
If no selection exists, insert at the bottom. (Since code inserts at the bottom) Not 50:50 top/bot.
That’s it. There is really nothing more to it.
For Positions:
Zero below the currently selected parent object (if none exists, the scene is parent)
This counts for created meshes through both(!) dropdowns and objects dragged into the hiearchy.
If you drag inside the scene, at least round the third decimal so it dosnt look awful
If you drag inside the hierarchy, center to the parent object you dragged it into, not random
If you insert a parent to your object, center the parent to the object you selected
If you create a new prefab, Zero the prefab positions, not keep random world position
If you copy paste into a new object, keep the current position in worldspace
If you copy paste into a isolated prefab, zero it instead of doing something random
Other:
“Show in Explorer” should show the contents of the folder, not where the folder is located
In my years of using Unity, I have (for some reason) never used copy/paste to duplicate an object in the scene. I’ve only ever used ctrl-D to duplicate the object. I just tried copy/paste after seeing how screwy it performed in your video, and yup, exact same behavior. What’s specifically happening is that it’s keeping the pasted object’s local position the same as the copied object’s local position, regardless of which parent the object gets pasted into. Definitely not working correctly.
Good video overall. Highlights a lot of pain points.
I generally always use CTRL+D, the issue is that it does also move the object to the opposite side of the scene, which makes things super messy, if not completely disorienting.
Then if we combine this with the random mixing of inserting objects at the top or the bottom, it basically force-shuffles your scene constantly, making it extremely tedious to keep a clean scene even if you are trying hard to be orderly.
You see the Uncategorized category? In unity everything is uncategorized.
Source makes it hard to make a mess. Unity makes it hard to not make a mess.
Cinema 4D has probably the best hierarchy system in 3D software
Of course are there icons with different color codings, and all the copying, inserting, centering, grid etc works flawlessy. you can also set layers:
Any folder or objects can have a layer.
Layers then can be toggled to be clickable, visible, soloed, in the hierarchy visible, locked, script executing and more.
There are many more features like the take system where you can save snapshots of object states, or filter flat hierarchy by type, or give custom icons and colors and whatnot.
We however really don’t need anything super fancy in unity but the absolute basics need to be working somewhat acceptably which still do not.
The thread is about the fact that Editor UI team still can’t fix names in grid view of project window being unreadable. The state of UX around ProjectWindow and SceneView is horrible, but instead of fixing fundamental issues they are changing camera preview into new overlay system
Well, we have a mostly well defined rule-set how the editor works in this area. Maybe instead of “why it doesn’t work like the Source Engine” you could write down why on Earth the rule-set you find convenient you want to be the default for everyone. And of course, you should write down what rules you want. Otherwise this thread is exactly about why Unity isn’t Source Engine. And of course as always you can customize all the editor for yourself however you want.
@EricFFG on the one hand I’m very sorry you’re experiencing this.
On the other… THANK YOU!! I go through much of this each day, and many other complete head scratchers. There’s some solace in knowing others are experiencing this with the same amazement, astonishment and bewilderment, especially given how long it’s been this way.
Another point which is very annoying is that you cannot copy paste in the project
You have to drag and drop things all across the folders which is extremely slow and disorienting
First you have to locate the place where you want to go, then go back, drag it, and find back the place you wanted to go to, its just so slow and confusing
No, the point is “Why doesn’t Unity make sense?” and “look, this other engine has an explicit internal logic”.
Unity does not have general design rules that after you get a sense of, you can start intuiting how things work with other features, because every feature or UI section either has its own separate logic, or it used to have its own logic and is slowly being transitioned to something else and there are a ton of stuff that are being left in weird undefined behaviours that make no sense.
And why do you want simple requests? Those are as useless as the “Why Unity isn’t XYZ engine” posts you so despise.
How about Folders in the project view that are not transforms and are only there for organisational purposes? This has been a request Unity users request long before people knew how Unreal or Source worked en masse. This is a straightforward and reasonable request, but in the end it’s just as useful as “Why Unity isn’t XYZ engine” because nothing is done.
You make such excellent videos it might be worth doing that, and then considering scripting a “critique of UI and UX of Unity Editor, from a user” kind of video. As Unity clearly needs to see this kind of thing, spelt out.
Especially now that the only person that seemed to consider these things ( @aras-p ) has gone.
