What image dimension to use for my UI elements?

Hello guys,

So I am a bit confused about the canvas UI system.

I have these few questions:

1- What is the main difference between Overlay and Camera Render Mode

2- In “Scale with Screen Size”, what reference resolution to use? I need my game to be in HD mode for new phones.

3- So basically when a designer starts to draw the assets, what canvas size to choose? I mean should I use the highest resolution available ? Will the assets still look as it is in older/lower resolution phones? What’s the best strategy to design assets for different phone resolutions?

Thank you :slight_smile:

I’m not a designer, so I’m not 100% sure about the later points, but from what I’ve gathered:

  1. The Overlay canvas mode is basically a 2D render of your GUI elements on the screen. The second one, Camera Render needs a camera to work properly, as it renders the UI on top of the stuff directly rendered by the camera, if that makes sense. Basically, you’re not limited to the 2d space of an overlay, and if your camera is rendering Perspective you can achieve some realy cool tilt effects with your UI.

  2. If you want your game to be nicely shown on HD gevices you might need to experiments with all these DPI settings in the Canvas Scaller component. I’m not really sure how it works because I haven’t done that much. Experiment with increasing the DPI of the images, maybe that’ll help.

  3. You might want to read this Unity Manual entry for some clues.