Editor Custom Skins

Get bored of the Dark(Pro Only) and Light Skins?
How many times you tried to ask for a new skin....and never found a solution?
If that's intersts you, so keep reading. If not, so skip this thread.it is not for you
Recently I was asked to build a tool for the Engine, and It required me to implement a special type of control buttons in the editor, which was the thing that let me ask how easy it will be to add a new types to the editor or even customize it (not building tools, but breaking it and building it in the way I like).
I Spent sometime working on that till I was able to figure out so many things under the hood, but after I've finished the task for the company, I decided to go deeper with the editor for my own joy.

As you can see in the screenshots, I'm on my way to flip UnityDark to a UnityGreen. Also was able to:

• Localize the menus, tabs, inspector ...all the text to Arabic (I'm a type of person who like to keep apps in English as I learned them in English, but I did the localization to see how easy it will be).
• Changed the Script compiling animated 12 frame to use the rainbow circle of Mac OSX.
  
• Changed some of the UI assets in the About Unity menu.
  
• Even Change the text color of the license.
• Error colors to be Pink instead of Red & the Warning to Cyan instead of Yellow.
  
• Some parts of the Build window.
• The help icon alongside to each component to a green book.
  
• Buttons Text Color in Inspector
• UI buttons Colors (Scene View buttons, Console Buttons,....etc)

Component Help Icon


Inspector Buttons


Console Buttons


Console Warning


About Window


Game View Buttons


Compiling Scripts


I've build a set of tools and workflow that can be used to replace/change any of the editor UI elements (colors, icons). But it will require a restart at the end.

I'll keep this post as a WIP to my process till I end up with Unity Green, Yellow, Orange and Blue; But it might take a while as I'm doing it in my free time and it requires too much time. The Editor UI elements is almost near to 4k texture file.

Also Using this framework give an access to the default assets. So you can change/replace the default shaders, materials, meshes, mecanime character, fonts, .......etc

I'm not sure if Unity Technologies are going to like this, so I'll keep it a work in progress thing till I figure out if I can share more and talk about the how of it, or I just keep it in my computer

-m

 

Looks good, waiting to see if you can get it all the colors.

 

how you i did it?

unity3diy

 

@willgoldstone , the forums full of users who wants fancy UI. My personal goal is First, to discover more inside the engine...perhaps more beyond what normal users have found; Second, make the UI fitting with Windows8 and OSX Yosemite. But not wasting much time on that anyway.Because at the end of the day I'm one of those old users of dark themes in all application types!

@faraz , Can't tell right now. But it is for real..and bloody easy

Today I've spent few minutes working on the three main button in the engine. I picked a nice looking for them. Also I managed to set The play mode color to Orange and record mode to Red. Normal is White. Still working on the buton outline square to make it more like Metro Style of Windows8.

Normal:

Hit Play:

Also I found it will be fair to put the Ouya Logo in the Android Build target ^_^


Also I figured out that I can use the editor compressions (that we apply to the textures while deploying for platforms) to make the buttons looks more sharp, detailed and clean.


-m

 

I did this while ago and as you said is easy, but i prefer my free white skin.
I'm wondering who want a green editor it looks like those cheaps chinese interfaces for mobiles or music players.

 

Not appealing.

Cool that you've doing some stuff with the interface though.

 

After using the black skin for a while now, i would never go back to the white skin : p
Im sure this could also be used to add dark skin to the free version, the green one is only an example i guess, even if its a pretty ugly one in my opinion : D

Very cool work though : )

 

Thanks everyone for your comments.
I just wanted to post an update saying that I'm satisfied with he results, and that led me to close this study to be able to focus in another topics. Here is my postmortem with some clarification, but not details about how I achieved it:

http://www.mamoniem.com/unity-editor-custom-skins/

-m

 

As lots of people sent me asking for hints regarding this process (mail, discuss, forum messages,.....); I would like to post those hints here for further inquiries, but I'll not share any of the tools I wrote to hack the file:

*All the matter related to a file called "unity editor resources" inside the unity installation.
it is a *.assets file, which can be hacked using the editor itself. Then adding files to it requires writing a some tools.

*This section of the API will help out:
http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/AssetDatabase.html

I hope it helps, And please feel free to contact me regarding anything Except the tools to access the file content.

Cheers,
-m

 

love this idea! custom editor UI would be great.

 

Glad you loved it! I might go back for it again to try an Orange Unity ^_^

-m

 

Shut the Front Door!!!!
WTF have you done to the Unity Editor.

You must be sued
For ruining :/

 

I just entered from the door they forgot opened nothing to be sued for...They might need a nice carpenterDev to completely close that damn door

-m

 

Any update on this?

 

Nope!
I just pointed all the roads, and people have to continue I've no enough time to go more with a full skin, the artistic photoshop stuff makes me bored quickly.

-m

 

Alright sounds good