Design interfaces with the Control nodes — Godot Engine (3.1) documentation in English (2024)

The 5 most common Control nodes for UI design

TextureRect¶

TextureRect displays a texture or image inside a UI.It seems similar to the Sprite node, but it offers multiple scaling modes.Set the Stretch Mode property to change its behavior:

• Scale On Expand (compat) scales the texture to fit the node’s bounding rectangle,only if expand property is true; otherwise, it behaves like Keep mode.Default mode for backwards compatibility.
• Scale scales the texture to fit the node’s bounding rectangle.
• Tile makes the texture repeat, but it won’t scale.
• Keep and Keep Centered force the texture to remain at itsoriginal size, in the top left corner or the center of the framerespectively.
• Keep Aspect and Keep Aspect Centered scales the texture but force it to remainits original aspect ratio, in the top left corner or the center of the frame respectively.
• Keep Aspect Covered works just like Keep Aspect Centered but the shorter sidefits the bounding rectangle and the other one clips to the node’s limits.

As with Sprite nodes, you can modulate the TextureRect’s color. Clickthe Modulate property and use the color picker.

TextureButton¶

TextureButton is like TextureRect, except it has 5 texture slots:one for each of the button’s states. Most of the time, you’ll use theNormal, Pressed, and Hover textures. Focused is useful if your interfacelistens to the keyboard’s input. The sixth image slot, the Click Mask,lets you define the clickable area using a 2-bit, pure black and whiteimage.

In the Base Button section, you’ll find a few checkboxes that change howthe button behaves. When Toggle Mode is on, the button will togglebetween active and normal states when you press it. Disabled makes itdisabled by default, in which case it will use the Disabled texture.TextureButton shares a few properties with the texture frame: it has amodulate property, to change its color, and Resize and Stretch modes tochange its scale behavior.

TextureProgress¶

TextureProgress layers up to 3 sprites to create a progress bar. TheUnder and Over textures sandwich the Progress one, which displays thebar’s value.

The Mode property controls the direction in which the bar grows:horizontally, vertically, or radially. If you set it to radial, theInitial Angle and Fill Degrees properties let you limit the range of thegauge.

To animate the bar, you’ll want to look at the Range section. Set theMin and Max properties to define the range of the gauge. For instance,to represent a character’s life, you’ll want to set Min to 0, and Max tothe character’s maximum life. Change the Value property to update thebar. If you leave the Min and Max values to the default of 0 and 100,and set the Value property to 40, 40% of the Progress texture will showup, and 60% of it will stay hidden.

Label¶

Label prints text to the screen. You’ll find all its properties inthe Label section, in the Inspector. Write the text in the Textproperty, and check Autowrap if you want it to respect the textbox’ssize. If Autowrap is off, you won’t be able to scale the node. You canalign the text horizontally and vertically with Align and Valign,respectively.

NinePatchRect¶

NinePatchRect takes a texture split in 3 rows and 3 columns. Thecenter and the sides tile when you scale the texture, but it neverscales the corners. It is useful to build panels, dialog boxesand scalable backgrounds for your UI.

The anchor property

How to change the anchor¶

Like any properties, you can edit the 4 anchor points in the Inspector,but this is not the most convenient way. When you select a control node,the layout menu appears above the viewport, in the toolbar. It gives youa list of icons to set all 4 anchors with a single click, instead ofusing the inspector’s 4 properties. The layout menu will only show upwhen you select a control node.

Anchors are relative to the parent container¶

Each anchor is a value between 0 and 1. For the left and top anchors, avalue of 0 means that without any margin, the node’s edges will alignwith the left and top edges of its parent. For the right and bottomedges, a value of 1 means they’ll align with the parent container’sright and bottom edges. On the other hand, margins represent a distanceto the anchor position in pixels, while anchors are relative to theparent container’s size.

Margins change with the anchor¶

Margins update automatically when you move or resize a control node.They represent the distance from the control node’s edges to its anchor,which is relative to the parent control node or container. That’s whyyour control nodes should always be inside a container, as we’ll see ina moment. If there’s no parent, the margins will be relative to thenode’s own bounding Rectangle, set in the Rect section, in theinspector.

Try to change the anchors or nest your Control nodes inside Containers:the margins will update. You’ll rarely need to edit the marginsmanually. Always try to find a container to help you first; Godot comeswith nodes to solve all the common cases for you. Need to add spacebetween a lifebar and the border of the screen? Use the MarginContainer.Want to build a vertical menu? Use the VBoxContainer. More on thesebelow.

Use size tags to change how UI elements fill the available space¶

Every control node has Size Flags. They tell containers how the UIelements should scale. If you add the “Fill” flag to the Horizontal orVertical property, the node’s bounding box will take all the space itcan, but it’ll respect its siblings and retain its size. If there are 3TextureRect nodes in an HBoxContainer, with the “Fill” flags on bothaxes, they’ll each take up to a third of the available space, but nomore. The container will take over the node and resize it automatically.

The “Expand” flag lets the UI element take all the space it can, andpush against its siblings. Its bounding rectangle will grow against theedges of its parent, or until it’s blocked by another UI node.

You’ll need some practice to understand the size tags, as their effectcan change quite a bit depending on how you set up your interface.

The 5 most useful containers¶

If you build tools, you might need all of the containers. But for mostgames, a handful will be enough:

• MarginContainer, to add margins around part of the UI
• CenterContainer, to center its children in its bounding box
• VboxContainer and HboxContainer, to arrange UI elements in rows orcolumns
• GridContainer, to arrange Controls nodes in a grid-like pattern

CenterContainer centers all its children inside of its boundingrectangle. It’s one you typically use for title screens, if you want theoptions to stay in the center of the viewport. As it centers everything,you’ll often want a single container nested inside it. If you usetextures and buttons instead, they’ll stack up.

The MarginContainer adds a margin on any side of the child nodes. Add aMarginContainer that encompasses the entire viewport to add a separationbetween the edge of the window and the UI. You can set a margin on thetop, left, right, or bottom side of the container. No need to tick thecheckbox: click the corresponding value box and type any number. It willactivate automatically.

There are two BoxContainers: VBoxContainer and HBoxContainer. You cannotadd the BoxContainer node itself, as it is a helper class, but you canuse vertical and horizontal box containers. They arrange nodes either inrows or columns. Use them to line up items in a shop, or to buildcomplex grids with rows and columns of different sizes, as you can nestthem to your heart’s content.

VBoxContainer automatically arranges its children into a column. It putsthem one after the other. If you use the separation parameter, it willleave a gap between its children. HBoxContainer arranges UI elements ina row. It’s similar to the VBoxContainer, with an extra add_spacermethod to add a spacer control node before its first child or after itslast child, from a script.

The GridContainer lets you arrange UI elements in a grid-like pattern.You can only control the number of columns it has, and it will set thenumber of rows by itself, based on its children’s count. If you havenine children and three columns, you will have 9÷3 = 3 rows. Add threemore children and you’ll have four rows. In other words, it will createnew rows as you add more textures and buttons. Like the box containers,it has two properties to set the vertical and horizontal separationbetween the rows and columns respectively.

Godot’s UI system is complex, and has a lot more to offer. To learn howto design more advanced interfaces, head to the GUI section of the docs.