Scene view View Options toolbar
You can use the SceneA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info
See in Glossary view View Options toolbarA row of buttons and basic controls at the top of the Unity Editor that allows you to interact with the Editor in various ways (e.g. scaling, translation). More info
See in Glossary Overlay to choose various options for viewing the Scene and to enable/disable lighting and audio. These controls only affect the Scene viewAn interactive view into the world you are creating. You use the Scene View to select and position scenery, characters, cameras, lights, and all other types of Game Object. More info
See in Glossary during development and have no effect on the built game.
Draw mode menu
The first dropdown menu selects which Draw Mode will be used to depict the Scene. The available options are:
| Draw Mode | Function | |
|---|---|---|
| Shading Mode | ||
| Shaded | Show surfaces with their textures visible. | |
| Wireframe | Draw meshes with a wireframe representation. | |
| Shaded Wireframe | Show meshes textured and with wireframes overlaid. | |
| Miscellaneous | ||
| Shadow Cascades | Show directional light shadow cascades. | |
| Render Paths | Show the rendering pathThe technique that a render pipeline uses to render graphics. Choosing a different rendering path affects how lighting and shading are calculated. Some rendering paths are more suited to different platforms and hardware than others. More info See in Glossary for each GameObject using a color code: Blue indicates deferred shadingA rendering path in the Built-in Render Pipeline that places no limit on the number of Lights that can affect a GameObject. All Lights are evaluated per-pixel, which means that they all interact correctly with normal maps and so on. Additionally, all Lights can have cookies and shadows. More info See in Glossary Green indicates deferred lighting Yellow indicates forward renderingA rendering path that renders each object in one or more passes, depending on lights that affect the object. Lights themselves are also treated differently by Forward Rendering, depending on their settings and intensity. More info See in Glossary Red indicates vertex lit |
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| Alpha Channel | Render colors with alpha. | |
| Overdraw | Render GameObjectsThe fundamental object in Unity scenes, which can represent characters, props, scenery, cameras, waypoints, and more. A GameObject’s functionality is defined by the Components attached to it. More info See in Glossary as transparent “silhouettes”. The transparent colors accumulate, making it easy to spot places where one object is drawn over another. |
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| Mipmaps | Show ideal texture sizes using a color code: Red indicates that the texture is larger than necessary (at the current distance and resolution) Blue indicates that the texture might be larger. The ideal texture sizes depend on the resolution at which your application will run and how close the Camera can get to particular surfaces. |
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| Texture Streaming | Tint GameObjects green, red, or blue, depending on their status in the Texture Streaming system. For more information, see documentation on Texture Streaming debugging. | |
| SpriteA 2D graphic objects. If you are used to working in 3D, Sprites are essentially just standard textures but there are special techniques for combining and managing sprite textures for efficiency and convenience during development. More info See in Glossary Mask |
Sprite Masks are used to either hide or reveal parts of a Sprite or group of Sprites. See Sprite MasksA texture which defines which areas of an underlying image to reveal or hide. More info See in Glossary for more information. |
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| Deferred | These modes let you view each of the elements of the G-buffer (Albedo, Specular, Smoothness and Normal) in isolation. See documentation on Deferred Shading for more information. | |
| Global Illumination | The following modes are available to help visualize aspects of the Global IlluminationA group of techniques that model both direct and indirect lighting to provide realistic lighting results. See in Glossary system: Systems, Clustering, Lit Clustering, UV Charts, and Contributors/Receivers. See documentation on GI Visualisations for information about each of these modes. |
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| Realtime Global Illumination | The following modes are available to help visualize aspects of the Enlighten Realtime Global Illumination system: Albedo, Emissive, Indirect, and Directionality. See documentation on GI Visualisations for information about each of these modes. | |
| Baked Global Illumination | The following modes are available to help visualize aspects of the Baked Global Illumination system: Baked Light Map, Directionality, ShadowmaskA Texture that shares the same UV layout and resolution with its corresponding lightmap. More info See in Glossary, Albedo, Emissive, UV Charts, Texel Validity, UV Overlap, Baked LightmapA pre-rendered texture that contains the effects of light sources on static objects in the scene. Lightmaps are overlaid on top of scene geometry to create the effect of lighting. More info See in Glossary Culling, Lightmap Indices, and Light Overlap. See documentation on GI Visualisations for information about each of these modes. |
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| Material Validator | There are two Material Validator modes: Albedo and Metal Specular. These allow you to check whether your physically-based materials use values within the recommended ranges. See Physically Based Material Validator for more information. |
2D, lighting and Audio switches
To the right of the Render Mode menu are three buttons that switch certain Scene view options on or off:
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2D: switches between 2D and 3D view for the Scene. In 2D mode the cameraA component which creates an image of a particular viewpoint in your scene. The output is either drawn to the screen or captured as a texture. More info
See in Glossary is oriented looking towards positive z, with the x-axis pointing right and the y-axis pointing up. - Lighting: turns Scene view lighting (lights, object shading, etc) on or off.
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Audio: turns Scene view audio effectsAny effect that can modify the output of Audio Mixer components, such as filtering frequency ranges of a sound or applying reverb. More info
See in Glossary on or off.
Effects button and menu
The menu (activated by the icon to the right of the Audio button) has options to enable or disable rendering effects in the Scene view.
- SkyboxA special type of Material used to represent skies. Usually six-sided. More info
See in Glossary: a skybox texture rendered in the Scene’s background - FogA post-processing effect that overlays a color onto objects depending on the distance from the camera. Use this to simulate fog or mist in outdoor environments, or to hide clipping of objects near the camera’s far clip plane. More info
See in Glossary: gradual fading of the view to a flat color with distance from the camera. -
Flares: lens flaresA component that simulates the effect of lights refracting inside a camera lens. Use a Lens Flare to represent very bright lights or add atmosphere to your scene. More info
See in Glossary on lights. - Always Refresh: Defines whether animated materials display the animation. When selected, any time-based effects (for example, Shaders) will animate. For example, Scene effects (like grass waving on a Terrain).
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Post Processing: Shows Post-processingA process that improves product visuals by applying filters and effects before the image appears on screen. You can use post-processing effects to simulate physical camera and film properties, for example Bloom and Depth of Field. More info post processing, postprocessing, postprocess
See in Glossary effects. - Particle SystemsA component that simulates fluid entities such as liquids, clouds and flames by generating and animating large numbers of small 2D images in the scene. More info
See in Glossary: Shows Particle System effects.
The Effects button itself acts as a switch that enables or disables all the selected effects at once.
Scene visibility switch
The Scene visibility switch toggles Scene visibility for GameObjects on and off. When it’s on, Unity applies the Scene visibility settings. When it’s off, Unity ignores them.
For more information, see the documentation on Scene Visibility.
Camera settings menu
The Camera settings menu contains options for configuring the Scene view camera. For more information, see the documentation on Camera settings.
Gizmos menu
The GizmosA graphic overlay associated with a GameObject in a Scene, and displayed in the Scene View. Built-in scene tools such as the move tool are Gizmos, and you can create custom Gizmos using textures or scripting. Some Gizmos are only drawn when the GameObject is selected, while other Gizmos are drawn by the Editor regardless of which GameObjects are selected. More info
See in Glossary menu contains options for how objects, icons, and gizmos are displayed. This menu is available in both the Scene view and the Game view. See documentation on the Gizmos Menu manual page for more information.
- Scene Visibility Switch added in 2019.1 NewIn20191
- Scene view Camera settings added in 2019.1
- Component Editor Tools panel switch added in 2019.1
- Toolbar moved to Overlays in 2021.2