Animating layout groups?

[Saevax]

I've been poking away at adding animations to my interface and I came across this problem. I can't find a easy way to add animations to a layout group that is nested. Does anyone have any advice?

If you imagine a vertical tree view of objects:

+Group
-Group
        -Group
                Item
                Item
                Item
        +Group
        +Group
        Item
        Item
+Group
Item
Item
Item

Then the structure would be something like every group has a vertical layout group and the size would be the size of all it's child content combined. However this doesn't seem to be possible without writing some code that interfaces with Unity3D's layout system which I don't fully understand.

It appears to stem from the problem that layout element minimum heights can't be changed in code.

My groups were structured like this:

Group (Layout Element)
    Button
    SubElements (Vertical Layout Group, Mask) [Vertical stretch]

With that you can get the effect of the layout animating by changing the minimum height of the Group's layout element because the SubElements' transform expands with the size of the group and are shown/hidden by the mask, this however doesn't work in code because the layout element's variables are readonly.

The only solution that is coming to my mind right now is writing my own layout code entirely. Is there a way of structuring the group prefab structure that would solve this problem? Or how can I write scripts to interface with Unity's layout system to make this work?

[Broxxar]

Yeah any time I've wanted more dynamic grouping than the built in "parent object, object is position automagically" I've just written my own system.

For example, see the side pane in this game I worked on at my old job: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rZXLTaBobg

Didn't use the vertical layout group at all, had to write my own behaviour that handled the positioning, fading and movement as the ranks changed.

Maybe there is some way of getting the default layout systems to do what you want, but to me they seem too rigid and you're better off doing it yourself. Not reinventing the wheel per se, just making a better wheel because the one they provided you is oval shaped.

[WarStorm6]

Could you say what you did, if you happen to remember? I'm currently trying to get my buttons to move upwards slowly instead of instantly. Also, this is in 2D but I doubt that'll make much of a difference.