The Inspector panel in Unity
is a panel for adjusting
settings for any object,
asset and editor preference.
For objects, the inspector begins with a title,
a check box for you to check if the
state of the object will remain static in the game.
This means it's a valid candidate for
light mapping and navigation mesh baking.
And then the tag and layer drop-downs.
Tags allow you to assign a tag to
one or many objects in order to address them via code.
Whilst layers allow you to group objects
and apply certain rules to these layers
such as lighting or collision rules.
After these elements the inspector then lists
the components attached to an object.
Beginning with the transform,
the default position, rotation and scale
of your object.
On any component the inspector allows
you to adjust fields in various ways.
You can drag over the values,
you can click and retype,
or your can choose to reset the values using
the cog icon to the right of the component.
In addition to the cog there is also a link
to the reference material on the component
and you can get to this by clicking the
blue book icon, and this will open the
documentation page on this component.
A context sensitive panel, the inspector changes
to whatever you have selected,
meaning that you can adjust any object
and immediately dive in to settings and back.
Because Unity makes use of dragging and dropping to assign values
sometimes you may click on items
that take you to their settings,
rather than the one you wish to apply them to.
And for this reason you can lock the inspector
in order to work with a particular item
and then unlock once you are done assigning settings.
For example on this game object I have a script component
to which I must assign an array of textures.
But when I select my first texture I want the inspector
to remain on my game object,
rather than showing the texture's settings.
I could simply hold down the mouse
or I can simply select the object
and click on the lock at the top of the inspector.
This way when I select one or many textures
I can then drag and drop without the inspector changing focus.
Once I am done with this I simply click the lock again
and I can then select anything that I need to.
The inspector also offers a way of finding assets used on objects.
For example materials.
When clicking on an asset used within a renderer
you can see that asset highlighted inside the project panel.
It does this by highlighting with a yellow outline.
This helps you easily find the assets that your
game objects depend upon.
In this example we can see an object that has a material
assigned to it's renderer.
This particular material is then previewed
at the bottom of the inspector
and I can adjust that material directly from here.
However, the other two objects that I don't have selected
also use this material, so I must bare in mind that
the actual material I am adjusting
is the original material asset inside the project
and not a particular instance of an object
in the same way that I can adjust the scale of this object
without adjusting any other objects that
also have a scale value.
Components within the inspector can also be disabled
by clicking the checkbox to the left of their name.
And the entire object can be disabled by clicking
the checkbox next to it's name
at the top of the inspector.
When objects are disabled in this way
you'll notice that their name is greyed out
inside the hierarchy panel.
And that's the basics of the inspector in Unity.
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