Noob question relating to cameras

[hkessock]

I would very much like to package up my individual NGUI UIs into prefabs, and on my first day have been very happy with how easy it is to get going with NGUI.

I did run into an issue though when instantiating prefabs.

I ASSumed that to create the prefab I should be dragging the UI root into an empty prefab, which means that the prefab has a child camera object.  This, of course, ensures that NGUI will draw the UI components.

My issue is that when I have more than one prefab (e.g., I have a splash screen NGUI prefab and a network file transfer dialog NGUI prefab) there end up being two NGUI cameras in the scene, and it appears that each camera renders both NGUI prefabs (the cameras don't just draw their child objects.)

Am I just screwing this up conceptually?

Worst case, I could simply ensure that at least one NGUI camera was in the scene and delete any new ones that appear after prefab instantiation (or the reverse, don't include any cameras and instantiate a camera when adding NGUI prefabs if I haven't done so already...)

I also presume that having multiple cameras would make optimizations difficult (render queuing, sorting, atlas usage, et cetera...)

Anybody prefab their dialogs like this?  If so, what's your approach?

BTW, NGUI is great, thanks for the hard work.

Cheers,

     Hans

[ArenMook]

You should not be including UIRoot and camera in your prefab. Watch the tutorial videos I posted -- to create a prefab out of a button I just drag the button itself into the Prefab Toolbar.

[hkessock]

If I don't include UI root, will NGUI automagically create one?  Where will the NGUI camera come from?

[ArenMook]

UIRoot isn't need to draw the UI. Only the UIPanel is needed. NGUI automatically parents to a UIRoot when you drag any UI element into the scene. At run-time when instantiating, you should be passing a valid parent object to NGUITools.AddChild(parent, prefab). Make this parent your UIRoot or something similar underneath it.

[hkessock]

I'm sorry, but what do you mean by "valid parent object" - any game object or...?

[ArenMook]

A game object underneath your UIRoot or the UIRoot itself, such as UIRoot.list[0].gameObject.

[hkessock]

I'm sorry I'm not understanding what you're saying.

When you use the term "UIRoot" you refer to it both as "your UIRoot" or "the UIRoot" - do you just mean that I simply need to call NGUITools.AddChild(parent, prefab) with "parent" being basically any gameobject?

In other words, as long as I use NGUITools.AddChild, the parent object could simply be created dynamically as an empty object just before that call?

E.g.

(1)GameObject m_oMyOwnUIRoot = new GameObject( "MyUIRoot" );
(2)NGUITools.AddChild( m_oMyOwnUIRoot, m_oMyNGUIDialogPrefab );

Cheers

[ArenMook]

1. NGUITools.AddChild(UIRoot.list[0].gameObject, yourPrefab);

No, you can't create the parent before calling AddChild. That defeats the whole purpose. The object must be underneath the UIRoot. The code I just pasted above will work.

[hkessock]

This is the part that confuses me: "you can't create the parent before calling AddChild" and "the object must be underneath the UI Root."

Perhaps I should start over.

Imagine I have a brand new scene, and in that scene is only the default Main camera provided by Unity.

There's nothing else in the scene at this point, no UI Root, no other objects, nothing.

If I want to create an instance of my prefab dialog box (created with awesome NGUI components), and my prefab network file transfer UI (also created with awesome NGUI components), what is the process?

Thanks, and sorry I'm not "getting it" just yet.

[ArenMook]

If you intend to instantiate UI elements, the scene should already have a default UI hierarchy present (UIRoot + UI Camera). If it doesn't, then it's up to you to create it (NGUITools.CreateUI).

[hkessock]

"it's up to you to create it (NGUITools.CreateUI)." - BINGO!

Thanks Michael