Question by Mattia-Furlan · Feb 17, 2017 at 04:30 PM · 2d texture2d system

Noob question about 2D graphic drawing system

Hi everyone! I'm Mattia and I decide to do an experiment making a mini-game with 2.5D graphic style like the old days with backgrounds pre-rendered. There are many posts in this forum with people asking how to make games like Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, etc. but my question is slightly different and it's more related to 2D texture and canvas elements. I started to look into several assets to understand how things works with 2D objects and making tests by myself, but the question is the same and I can't find a reason. Why the unity Engine, needs to draw tris, which mean it generate meshes, to show UI (2D) elements, images or texts on the screen? If you visualize the scene in wireframe mode, you can see that 2d objects are always meshes. Looking at the stats panel, I am aware that those triangles doesn't really take away too much resources to run the overall result but I would like to know why for a simple black background (not that one from the camera), generated via script, it generates a mesh. It sounds a little weird to me... Can someone explain me why unity have this behavior with 2D elements and why it cannot draw a simple picture directly on the screen? I'm really intrigued to know how the system works and if someone has some references, links, etc. would be really appreciated. Thanks, Matt.

P.S.: If there are grammar errors or bad english, my apologies

Add comment · Show 1

Oana · Feb 18, 2017 at 07:14 AM 1

Unity started off as a 3D engine, and the core of its functionality is still that.

It probably could have developed an independent system where everything is drawn on a canvas of sorts like with HTML5 games. But that is so different than the existing systems that they may as well have made a new engine.

Furthermore, some people combine 2D and 3D elements in their game. With the way the current system works, this is possible and relatively easy.