Around a year and a half ago, popular game development tool Unity promised to change how user interfaces are created. With the release of 4.6, developers can now ease the painful task of creating UI with a powerful built-in solution which removes the need to use workarounds to achieve what you need.

Unity’s animation system provides support for aspects like bouncing buttons and things which fly into view.

Unity is a WYSIWYG-style creation engine which – up to most solutions – is simple in most respects thanks to its visual “drag and drop” system. Creating the actual interface for the game was always the most frustrating part of working within Unity because it would require the developer to use Unity’s performance-taxing OnGUI, or a third-party GUI editor…

Many third-party add-ons have deteriorated over time due to Unity hiring the developers behind them – such as Michael Lyashenko behind NGUI, or Juha Kiili behind RageSpline. As a result of such talent acquisitions, however, developers now have a comprehensive first-party solution for building their UI.

Interfaces, like the game itself, can now be created within the editor. “Smart anchoring” and smooth resizing systems prevent the kind of funky-happenings which occur at different screen resolutions, whilst Unity’s animation system provides support for aspects like bouncing buttons and things which fly into view.

Below is a 30 minute demo showing-off the new UI system:

Alongside the new interface creation tool, Unity can now boast being able to support x86 processors for Android. The free update is said to be the last before the firm ships the big 5.0 version of their increasingly-brilliant tool.

Do you intend to check out Unity 4.6’s new UI creator? Let us know in the comments.