best way to display GUI on mobiles

[Splankton]

What is the best way for the mobile platforms to display GUI on screen during play? Is using camera 1 for the main camera and then make another camera on top of that to show the  GUI ok?
Or adding all GUI elements on the main camera?
Or any other ways to display GUI during gameplay that won't hurt performance.
By the way, I'm using NGUI if that makes a difference.
Thanks for any suggestions.

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

 Using 2 camera is a very good option, it's a lot easier to manage and "clean", maintain your UI gameObject well above your game for example, so that edited is easy ( dont put everything around the world center, it's difficult to manage then. Also don't worry about the weird NGUI scaling you will get, it's for pixel perfect and convenience, so it's fine if your NGUI is tiny tiny or huge comapre to your character model or your scene elements,

bye,

 Jean

[Splankton]

Hi,

 Using 2 camera is a very good option, it's a lot easier to manage and "clean", maintain your UI gameObject well above your game for example, so that edited is easy ( dont put everything around the world center, it's difficult to manage then. Also don't worry about the weird NGUI scaling you will get, it's for pixel perfect and convenience, so it's fine if your NGUI is tiny tiny or huge comapre to your character model or your scene elements,

bye,

 Jean

Thanks Jean, makes sense.

[Yanifska]

Hey guys,
I just bought NGUI a few days ago, as it was on sale and I am also interested in those same questions.
UI and NGUI are totally new to me and I thought maybe you could post a few links  about good strategies for setting up the UI.
I am quite intrigued by your 2 camera setup, will such a setup perform well on mobile devices ?

What is the difference between the Ngui actions from the wiki and those from the asset store ? Do you advice those :
http://u3d.as/content/rocket-games/play-maker-ngui-scripts/56r

looking forward for any insight
Yaniv

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

 Yes, multiple camera on mobile is efficient ( as efficient as what must be displayed in them... so this is important to still understand what can be done on mobile and what should be avoided, like wrong shaders, too much meshes, not optimized textures, too much special effect on camera, etc).

As for the two package different actions are proposed, I think you should contact the author for the one sold on the asset store for a better insight, I haven't tested it myself so I can't say, but it seems that it does the work very well.

bye,

 Jean