Finding World Space Coordinates of a Unity UI Element

Question

So according to the Unity documentation RectTransform.anchoredPosition will return the screen coordinates of a UI element if the anchors are touching at the pivot point of the RectTransform. However, if they are separated (in my case positioned at the corners of the rect) they will give you the position of the anchors relative to the pivot point. This is wonderful unless you want to keep appropriate dimensions of a UI object through multiple resolutions and position a different object based on that position at the same time.

Let's break this down. I have object1 and object2. object1 is positioned at (322.5, -600) and when the anchor points meet at the center (pivot) of the object anchoredPosition returns just that and object2 is positioned just fine. On the other hand once I have placed the anchors at the 4 corners of object1 anchoredPosition returns (45.6, -21). Thats just no good. I've even tried using Transform.position and then Camera.WorldToScreenPoint(), but that does just about as much to getting me to my goal.

I was hoping that you might be able to help me find a way to get the actual screen coordinates of this object. If anyone has any insight into this subject it would be greatly appreciated.

Notes: I've already attempted to use RectTranfrom.rect.center and it returned (0, 0)

I've also looked into RectTransformUtility and those helper functions have done all of squat.

Answer 1

anchoredPosition returns "The position of the pivot of this RectTransform relative to the anchor reference point." It has nothing to do with screen coordinates or world space.

If you're looking for the screen coordinates of a UI element in Unity, you can either use rectTransform.TransformPoint or rectTransform.GetWorldCorners to get any of the Vector3s you'd need in world space. Which ever you decide to go with, you can then pass them into Camera.WorldToScreenPoint()