Combine text and buttons in scroll rect

Question

I'm attempting to create a scrollable UI object that has 2 sections with one on top of the other: a text section and a button list section. My main problem is that the text and list of buttons change in size depending on what content the player is viewing.

It seems that just throwing the text and buttons into an empty UI object doesn't work, because the empty game object does not take on the size of its children, and since the empty object does not have its own size, scrolling through its contents is not possible.

Is there maybe an element that I am not aware of that could help me out?

Answer 1

Here's the setup I use for Scroll. It seems you are missing the third object, the content object. It is what decides the physical size of your content size using a Content Size Fitter and a Layout Group. I decided to include the entire setup just in case you are missing something else.

Parent Object (Mask OR Rect Mask 2D) - Object that is the visual bounds of your UI
     -> Scroll Object (ScrollRect) - Actual scroll component that drives the UI scroll
          -> Content Object (Horizontal OR Vertical Layout Group AND Content Size Fitter) - Is the parent of your actual data in your scroll 

To explain this a bit better, the Mask is used when you have a nonrectangular asset that you still want to be your max viewing bounds. Anything outside of this Mask will not be rendered. A Mask is more expensive than a Rect Mask 2D, so if your viewport is a square or rectangle, then use the 2D component.

The Scroll Rect is the driver of the scrolling of UI elements in Unity. Make sure to check the box if it is horizontal or vertical. I assume in your use case you are using vertical. Make sure to set the Content field to be the child of this object and the Viewport to be the parent (the mask).

The Content Object has two components on it. The first being the Content Size Fitter which will force this object to be the size of its content. If your scroll is a vertical scroll, set the Vertical Fit to Preferred Size and leave the Horizontal Fit to be Unconstrained size. If it is the opposite, then set the opposite of what I just said. The other component on this object is a Horizontal Layout Group OR a Vertical Layout Group. The difference being which direction your scroll is. The checkboxes in the settings of this object matter quite a bit. Check out the docs on what each one does.

If you attach the components as I specified and set the proper settings on the layout group, you should be able to have as many dynamic objects with variable size swapping between text and buttons.

If you have any other questions let me know. UI can be a bit daunting at first but once you figure it out, it gets much easier.

Edit: To achieve an object that can change size with a text object and a button, you will need to use a combination of content size fitters and layout groups.

Here is an example hierarchy

Here is the result

Using a combination of the layout groups and content fitters forces the container the text is in to be the size it needs to be. If you are making these assets static meaning none of it is data-driven at runtime, then this should work right away. If you are changing this data at runtime, you will need to use LayoutRebuilder on the parent objects to assure that the layouts rebuild properly. Let me know if you have questions.