Unity2D: Scale a GameObject without Scaling its Children

Question

I have an enemy that has children in it; the enemy also has a death animation. Within the death animation (using the animator), I have scaled the enemy to an appropriate size. However, the children within the enemy is also being scaled down even though I have a animation on the child where I have sized it, I also added anchor positions on this child. Is there a way I can scale down the enemy but also keep the size of the child, p.s. the child is a UI text object. Thank you!

Answer 1

set the child's scale to world space not local space.

local space is the default, but it will go off of the scale of the parent so when the enemy shrinks so will the text.

alternatively you could set both objects to be children of an empty object, then just scale your enemy down and the text should stay the same size since its using the scale of the empty parent, which isn't changing size either.

see here:

 public static Vector3 GetWorldScale(Transform transform)
    {
        Vector3 worldScale = transform.localScale;
        Transform parent = transform.parent;

        while (parent != null)
        {
            worldScale = Vector3.Scale(worldScale,parent.localScale);
            parent = parent.parent;
        }

        return worldScale;
    }

just a work around though, your meant to use this:

yourtransform.LocalScale=Transform.localToWorldMatrix

but it gives me issues... the above method works well though.

transform.scale=GetWorldScale(transform);

edit: lets be clear, the easiest thing to do would be to unpraent the objext before shrinking the parent. this will separate the scales.

Answer 2

Maybe (hopefully) there are better solutions but you could use a component on the child objects that always keeps the original scale inverting relative changes in the parents scale

public class FreezeScale : MonoBehaviour
{
    private Vector3 originalScale;
    private Vector3 parentOriginalScale;

    private void Awake()
    {
        // afaik RectTransform inherits from Transform 
        // so this should also work for UI objects.

        originalScale = transform.localScale;

        parentOriginalScale = transform.parent.localScale;
    }

    private void LateUpdate()
    {
        var currentParentScale = Transform.parent.localScale;

        // Get the relative difference to the original scale
        var diffX = currentParentScale.x / parentOriginalScale.x;
        var diffY = currentParentScale.y / parentOriginalScale.y;
        var diffZ = currentParentScale.z / parentOriginalScale.z;

        // This inverts the scale differences
        var diffVector = new Vector3 (1/diffX, 1/diffY, 1/diffZ);

        // Apply the inverted differences to the original scale
        transform.localScale = originalScale * diffVector;
    }
}

---

Not tested since hacked in on my mobile phone but I hope you get the idea ;)

Answer 3

The easiest way to solve your problem that I see is to introduce another GameObject higher in the hierarchy.

This GameObject would be the parent of your enemy object and your Text object which currently is a child of the enemy.

This way you can scale the enemy independently of the Text.