GUI Skin (IMGUI System)

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.

Please Note: This page refers to part of the IMGUI system, which is a scripting-only UI system. Unity has a full GameObject-based UI system which you may prefer to use. It allows you to design and edit user interface elements as visible objects in the scene view. See the UI System Manual for more information.

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.

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.