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Manual Scripting API

The Main Windows

Legacy Documentation: Version 2017.2 (Go to current version) Language: English
Creating Gameplay
Unity User Manual (2017.2) / Working in Unity /
Scenes
Creating Gameplay / Transforms
GameObjects
Input
Transforms
Rotation and Orientation in Unity
Lights
Cameras
Transforms Leave feedback Other Versions

The Transform is used to store a GameObject’s position, rotation,

Adding Random Gameplay
scale and parenting state and is thus very important. A GameObject
Elements
will always have a Transform component attached - it is not possible
Cross-Platform Considerations
to remove a Transform or to create a GameObject without one.
Publishing Builds
Troubleshooting
Editing Transforms
Editor Features
Transforms are manipulated in 3D space in the X, Y, and Z axes or in
Advanced Development
2D space in just X and Y. In Unity, these axes are represented by the
Advanced Editor Topics colors red, green, and blue respectively.
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A transform showing the color-coding of the axes
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A Transform can be edited in the Scene View or by changing its
Open-source repositories properties in the Inspector. In the scene, you can modify Transforms
Asset Store Publishing using the Move, Rotate and Scale tools. These tools are located in the
Platform-specific upper left-hand corner of the Unity Editor.

The View, Translate, Rotate, and Scale tools

The tools can be used on any object in the scene. When you click on
an object, you will see the tool gizmo appear within it. The
appearance of the gizmo depends on which tool is selected.
 Transform gizmo
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When you click and drag on one of the three gizmo axes, you will
Manual Scripting API notice that its color changes to yellow. As you drag the mouse, you
will see the object translate, rotate, or scale along the selected axis.
Whenversion)
Legacy Documentation: Version 2017.2 (Go to current you release the mouse button, the axis remains selected.
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A Transform showing the selected (yellow) X axis

There is also an additional option in Translate mode to lock

movement to a particular plane (ie, allow dragging in two of the axes
while keeping the third unchanged). The three small coloured
squares around the center of the Translate gizmo activate the lock
for each plane; the colors correspond to the axis that will be locked
when the square is clicked (eg, blue locks the Z axis).

Parenting
Parenting is one of the most important concepts to understand
when using Unity. When a GameObject is a Parent of another
GameObject, the Child GameObject will move, rotate, and scale
exactly as its Parent does. You can think of parenting as being like
the relationship between your arms and your body; whenever your
body moves, your arms also move along with it. Child objects can
also have children of their own and so on. So your hands could be
regarded as “children” of your arms and then each hand has several
fingers, etc. Any object can have multiple children, but only one
parent. These multiple levels of parent-child relationships form a
Transform hierarchy. The object at the very top of a hierarchy (ie, the
only object in the hierarchy that doesn’t have a parent) is known as
the root.

You can create a Parent by dragging any GameObject in the

Hierarchy View onto another. This will create a Parent-Child
relationship between the two GameObjects.
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Manual Scripting API

Legacy Documentation: Version 2017.2 (Go to current version) Language: English

Example of a Parent-Child hierarchy. GameObjects with foldout

arrows to the left of their names are parents.

Note that the Transform values in the Inspector for any child
GameObject are displayed relative to the Parent’s Transform values.
These values are referred to as local coordinates. Returning to the
analogy of body and arms, the position of your body may move as
you walk but your arms will still be attached at the same relative
position. For scene construction, it is usually sufficient to work with
local coordinates for child objects but in gameplay it is often useful
to find their exact position in world space or global coordinates.
The scripting API for the Transform component has separate
properties for local and global position, rotation and scale and also
allows you to convert any point between local and global
coordinates.

Limitations with Non-Uniform

Scaling
Non-uniform scaling is when the Scale in a Transform has different
values for x, y, and z; for example (2, 4, 2). In contrast, uniform
scaling has the same value for x, y, and z; for example (3, 3, 3). Non-
uniform scaling can be useful in a few specific cases but it introduces
a few oddities that don’t occur with uniform scaling:-

• Certain components do not fully support non-uniform scaling. For

example, some components have a circular or spherical element
defined by a radius property, among them Sphere Collider,
Capsule Collider, Light and Audio Source. In cases like this the
circular shape will not become elliptical under non-uniform
scaling as you would expect and will simply remain circular.

• When a child object has a non-uniformly scaled parent and is

rotated relative to that parent, it may appear skewed or
“sheared”. There are components that support simple non-
uniform scaling but don’t work correctly when skewed like this.
For example, a skewed Box Collider will not match the shape of
the rendered mesh accurately.

• For performance reasons, a child object of a non-uniformly scaled

parent will not have its scale automatically updated when it
rotates. As a result, the child’s shape may appear to change
abruptly when the scale eventually is updated, say if the child
object is detached from the parent.

Importance of Scale
The scale of the Transform determines the difference between the
size of a mesh in your modeling application and the size of that mesh
in Unity. The mesh’s size in Unity (and therefore the Transform’s
 scale) is very important, especially during physics simulation. By
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the physics engine assumes that one unit in world space
corresponds to one metre. If an object is very large, it can appear to
Manual Scripting API fall in “slow motion”; the simulation is actually correct since
effectively, you are watching a very large object falling a great
distance.
Legacy Documentation: Version 2017.2 (Go to current version) Language: English

There are three factors that can affect the scale of your object:

• The size of your mesh in your 3D modeling application.

• The Mesh Scale Factor setting in the object’s Import Settings.

• The Scale values of your Transform Component.

Ideally, you should not adjust the Scale of your object in the
Transform Component. The best option is to create your models at
real-life scale so you won’t have to change your Transform’s scale.
The next best option is to adjust the scale at which your mesh is
imported in the Import Settings for your individual mesh. Certain
optimizations occur based on the import size, and instantiating an
object that has an adjusted scale value can decrease performance.
For more information, see the section about optimizing scale on the
Rigidbody component reference page.

Tips for Working with Transforms

• When parenting Transforms, it is useful to set the parent’s
location to <0,0,0> before adding the child. This means that the
local coordinates for the child will be the same as global
coordinates making it easier to be sure you have the child in the
right position.

• Particle Systems are not affected by the Transform’s Scale. In

order to scale a Particle System, you need to modify the
properties in the System’s Particle Emitter, Animator and
Renderer.

• If you are using Rigidbodies for physics simulation then be sure

to read about the Scale property on the Rigidbody component
reference page.

• You can change the colors of the Transform axes (and other UI
elements) from the preferences (Menu: Unity > Preferences and
then select the Colors & keys panel).

• Changing the Scale affects the position of child transforms. For

example scaling the parent to (0,0,0) will position all children at
(0,0,0) relative to the parent.

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Copyright © 2017 Unity Technologies. Publication: 2017.2-001U. Built:

2017-12-08.
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Manual Scripting API

Legacy Documentation: Version 2017.2 (Go to current version) Language: English