UI Toolkit is intended to become the recommended UI system for your new UI development projects. However, in the current release, UI Toolkit does not have some features that Unity UI (uGUI) and Immediate Mode GUI (IMGUI) support. uGUI and IMGUI are more appropriate for certain use cases, and are required to support legacy projects.
This page provides a high-level feature comparison of UI Toolkit, uGUI, and IMGUI, and their respective approaches to UI design.
The following table lists the recommended and alternative system for runtime and Editor:
| 2022 | Recommendation | Alternative | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runtime | Unity UI | UI Toolkit | |
| Editor | UI Toolkit | IMGUI |
团队的技能集以及对不同技术的习惯程度也是一个重要的考虑因素。
The following table lists the recommended system for different roles:
| Roles | UI 工具包 | Unity UI (uGUI) |
IMGUI | Skill sets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 程序员 | 是 | 是 | 是 | 程序员可以使用任何游戏开发工具或 API。 |
| 技术美术师 | 部分支持 | 是 | 否 | 熟悉 Unity 基于游戏对象的工具和工作流程的技术美术师可能会习惯使用游戏对象、组件和 Scene 视图。 他们可能不习惯 UI 工具包类似于 Web 的方法或 IMGUI 的纯 C# 方法。 |
| UI 设计师 | 是 | 部分支持 | 否 | UI designers who are familiar with UI creation tools are likely to be comfortable with UI Toolkit’s document-based approach and can use the UI Builder to visually edit their UI. If they are not familiar with GameObject-based workflows, they might require help from programmers or level designers. |
UI Toolkit is in active development and releases new features frequently. uGUI and IMGUI are established and production-proven UI systems that are updated infrequently.
uGUI and IMGUI might be better choices if you need features that are not yet available in UI Toolkit, or you need to support or reuse older UI content.
uGUI is the recommended solution for the following:
MonoBehaviours
UI Toolkit is an alternative to uGUI if you create a screen overlay UI that runs on a wide variety of screen resolutions. Consider UI Toolkit to do the following:
The following table lists the recommended system for major runtime use cases:
| 2022 | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Multi-resolution menus and HUD in intensive UI projects | UI Toolkit |
| World space UI and VRVirtual Reality More info See in Glossary |
Unity UI |
| UI that requires customized shaders and materials | Unity UI |
The following table lists the recommended system for detailed runtime features:
| 2022 | UI 工具包 | Unity UI |
|---|---|---|
| WYSIWYG authoring | 是 | 是 |
| Nesting reusable components | 是 | 是 |
| Global style management | 是 | 否 |
| Layout and Styling Debugger | 是 | 是 |
| Scene integration | 是 | 是 |
| Rich text tags | 是 | 是* |
| Scalable text | 是 | 是* |
| Font fallbacks | 是 | 是* |
| Adaptive layout | 是 | 是 |
| Input system support | 是 | 是 |
| Serialized events | 否 | 是 |
| Visual Scripting support | 否 | 是 |
| Rendering pipelines support | 是 | 是 |
| Screen-space (2D) rendering | 是 | 是 |
| World-space (3D) rendering | 否 | 是 |
| Custom materials and shaders | 否 | 是 |
| Sprites / Sprite atlas support | 是 | 是 |
| Dynamic texture atlas | 是 | 否 |
| Textureless elements | 是 | 否 |
| UI anti-aliasing | 是 | 否 |
| Rectangle clipping | 是 | 是 |
| Mask clipping | 否 | 是 |
| Nested masking | 是 | 是 |
| UI transition animations | 是 | 否 |
| Integration with Animation Clips and Timeline | 否 | 是 |
*Requires the TextMesh Pro package
UI Toolkit is recommended if you create complex editor tools. UI Toolkit is also recommended for the following reasons:
IMGUI is an alternative to UI Toolkit for the following:
The following table lists the recommended system for major Editor use cases:
| 2022 | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Complex editor tool | UI Toolkit |
| Property drawers | UI Toolkit |
| Collaboration with designers | UI Toolkit |
The following table lists the recommended system for detailed Editor features:
| 2022 | UI 工具包 | IMGUI |
|---|---|---|
| WYSIWYG authoring | 是 | 否 |
| Nesting reusable components | 是 | 否 |
| Global style management | 是 | 是 |
| Layout and Styling Debugger | 是 | 否 |
| Rich text tags | 是 | 是 |
| Scalable text | 是 | 否 |
| Font fallbacks | 是 | 是 |
| Adaptive layout | 是 | 是 |
| Default Inspectors | Yes | 是 |
| Inspector: Edit custom object types | 是 | 是 |
| Inspector: Edit custom property types | 是 | 是 |
| Inspector: Mixed values (multi-editing) support | 是 | 是 |
| Array and list-view control | 是 | 是 |
| Data binding: Serialized properties | 是 | 是 |