GUI Skin

GUISkins are a collection of GUIStyles that can be applied to your GUI. Each Control type has its own Style definition. Skins are intended to allow you to apply style to an entire UI, instead of a single Control by itself.

To create a GUISkin, select Assets->Create->GUI Skin from the menubar.

GUISkins are part of the UnityGUI system. For more detailed information about UnityGUI, please take a look at the GUI Scripting Guide.

Properties

All of the properties within a GUI Skin are an individual GUIStyle. Please read the GUIStyle page for more information about how to use Styles.

Font	The global Font to use for every Control in the GUI
Box	The Style to use for all Boxes
Button	The Style to use for all Buttons
Toggle	The Style to use for all Toggles
Label	The Style to use for all Labels
Text Field	The Style to use for all Text Fields
Text Area	The Style to use for all Text Areas
Window	The Style to use for all Windows
Horizontal Slider	The Style to use for all Horizontal Slider bars
Horizontal Slider Thumb	The Style to use for all Horizontal Slider Thumb Buttons
Vertical Slider	The Style to use for all Vertical Slider bars
Vertical Slider Thumb	The Style to use for all Vertical Slider Thumb Buttons
Horizontal Scrollbar	The Style to use for all Horizontal Scrollbars
Horizontal Scrollbar Thumb	The Style to use for all Horizontal Scrollbar Thumb Buttons
Horizontal Scrollbar Left Button	The Style to use for all Horizontal Scrollbar scroll Left Buttons
Horizontal Scrollbar Right Button	The Style to use for all Horizontal Scrollbar scroll Right Buttons
Vertical Scrollbar	The Style to use for all Vertical Scrollbars
Vertical Scrollbar Thumb	The Style to use for all Vertical Scrollbar Thumb Buttons
Vertical Scrollbar Up Button	The Style to use for all Vertical Scrollbar scroll Up Buttons
Vertical Scrollbar Down Button	The Style to use for all Vertical Scrollbar scroll Down Buttons
Custom 1-20	Additional custom Styles that can be applied to any Control
Custom Styles	An array of additional custom Styles that can be applied to any Control
Settings	Additional Settings for the entire GUI
Double Click Selects Word	If enabled, double-clicking a word will select it
Triple Click Selects Line	If enabled, triple-clicking a word will select the entire line
Cursor Color	Color of the keyboard cursor
Cursor Flash Speed	The speed at which the text cursor will flash when editing any Text Control
Selection Color	Color of the selected area of Text

Details

When you are creating an entire GUI for your game, you will likely need to do a lot of customization for every different Control type. In many different game genres, like real-time strategy or role-playing, there is a need for practically every single Control type.

Because each individual Control uses a particular Style, it does not make sense to create a dozen-plus individual Styles and assign them all manually. GUI Skins take care of this problem for you. By creating a GUI Skin, you have a pre-defined collection of Styles for every individual Control. You then apply the Skin with a single line of code, which eliminates the need to manually specify the Style of each individual Control.

Creating GUISkins

GUISkins are asset files. To create a GUI Skin, select Assets->Create->GUI Skin from the menubar. This will put a new GUISkin in your Project View.

Editing GUISkins

After you have created a GUISkin, you can edit all of the Styles it contains in the Inspector. For example, the Text Field Style will be applied to all Text Field Controls.

No matter how many Text Fields you create in your script, they will all use this Style. Of course, you have control over changing the styles of one Text Field over the other if you wish. We'll discuss how that is done next.

Applying GUISkins

To apply a GUISkin to your GUI, you must use a simple script to read and apply the Skin to your Controls.

// Create a public variable where we can assign the GUISkin
var customSkin : GUISkin;

// Apply the Skin in our OnGUI() function
function OnGUI () {
	GUI.skin = customSkin;

	// Now create any Controls you like, and they will be displayed with the custom Skin
	GUILayout.Button ("I am a re-Skinned Button");

	// You can change or remove the skin for some Controls but not others
	GUI.skin = null;

	// Any Controls created here will use the default Skin and not the custom Skin
	GUILayout.Button ("This Button uses the default UnityGUI Skin");
}

In some cases you want to have two of the same Control with different Styles. For this, it does not make sense to create a new Skin and re-assign it. Instead, you use one of the Custom Styles in the skin. Provide a Name for the custom Style, and you can use that name as the last argument of the individual Control.

// One of the custom Styles in this Skin has the name "MyCustomControl"
var customSkin : GUISkin;

function OnGUI () {
	GUI.skin = customSkin;

	// We provide the name of the Style we want to use as the last argument of the Control function
	GUILayout.Button ("I am a custom styled Button", "MyCustomControl");

	// We can also ignore the Custom Style, and use the Skin's default Button Style
	GUILayout.Button ("I am the Skin's Button Style");
}

For more information about working with GUIStyles, please read the GUIStyle page. For more information about using UnityGUI, please read the GUI Scripting Guide.

Page last updated: 2007-10-01