How to use " 9-sliced" image type in non-GUI elements?

Question

In my game, I am using simple textures on quads. I could see Unity GUI allows us to slice the image by setting "image type" option as sliced.

I would like to do the same to my other textures I use in quads.

In simple words, I dont want the edges of my textures to be scaled when the texture itself is scaled.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Looks like you have to generate the mesh yourself, not so hard as it sounds. The mesh has to look like this:

Each textured mesh is defined by vertices (red dots on the picture) and (in this case) each vertex has two parameters:

1. A Vector3 with position. Only x and y used here, as a quad is flat (so, z = 0).
2. A Vector2 with the UV, that is how the material is put on the mesh. This are the texture coordinates: u and v.

To configure this mesh, I added parameters:

b - for border - how big is the border of the gameobject (in 3d units)
w, h - for width and height of the gameobject (in 3d units)
m - how big is the margin in the image (in float 0f to 0.5f)

How to do this in Unity3d:

1. Create an GameObject, add a MeshRenderer with the material you want and an empty MeshFilter.
2. Add a script that creates a mesh. Look at Unity3d docs for Mesh, first example.

Note that for unity3d you have to create this with triangles, not quads (so for each quad make two triangles).

Answer 2

Chanibal's solutions worked like a charm for me, but since I wasn't an expert in the matter, it wasn't trivial to me to implement this. I will let this code here in case somebody could find it useful.

using UnityEngine;

public class SlicedMesh : MonoBehaviour
{
    private float _b = 0.1f;
    public float Border
    {
        get
        {
            return _b;
        }
        set
        {
            _b = value;
            CreateSlicedMesh();
        }
    }

    private float _w = 1.0f;
    public float Width
    {
        get
        {
            return _w;
        }
        set
        {
            _w = value;
            CreateSlicedMesh();
        }
    }

    private float _h = 1.0f;
    public float Height
    {
        get
        {
            return _h;
        }
        set
        {
            _h = value;
            CreateSlicedMesh();
        }
    }

    private float _m = 0.4f;
    public float Margin
    {
        get
        {
            return _m;
        }
        set
        {
            _m = value;
            CreateSlicedMesh();
        }
    }

    void Start() 
    {

        CreateSlicedMesh();
    }

    void CreateSlicedMesh()
    {
        Mesh mesh = new Mesh();
        GetComponent<MeshFilter>().mesh = mesh;

        mesh.vertices = new Vector3[] {
            new Vector3(0, 0, 0), new Vector3(_b, 0, 0), new Vector3(_w-_b, 0, 0), new Vector3(_w, 0, 0),
            new Vector3(0, _b, 0), new Vector3(_b, _b, 0), new Vector3(_w-_b, _b, 0), new Vector3(_w, _b, 0),
            new Vector3(0, _h-_b, 0), new Vector3(_b, _h-_b, 0), new Vector3(_w-_b, _h-_b, 0), new Vector3(_w, _h-_b, 0),
            new Vector3(0, _h, 0), new Vector3(_b, _h, 0), new Vector3(_w-_b, _h, 0), new Vector3(_w, _h, 0)
        };

        mesh.uv = new Vector2[] {
            new Vector2(0, 0), new Vector2(_m, 0), new Vector2(1-_m, 0), new Vector2(1, 0),
            new Vector2(0, _m), new Vector2(_m, _m), new Vector2(1-_m, _m), new Vector2(1, _m),
            new Vector2(0, 1-_m), new Vector2(_m, 1-_m), new Vector2(1-_m, 1-_m), new Vector2(1, 1-_m),
            new Vector2(0, 1), new Vector2(_m, 1), new Vector2(1-_m, 1), new Vector2(1, 1)
        };

        mesh.triangles = new int[] {
            0, 4, 5,
            0, 5, 1,
            1, 5, 6,
            1, 6, 2,
            2, 6, 7,
            2, 7, 3,
            4, 8, 9,
            4, 9, 5, 
            5, 9, 10,
            5, 10, 6,
            6, 10, 11,
            6, 11, 7,
            8, 12, 13,
            8, 13, 9,
            9, 13, 14,
            9, 14, 10,
            10, 14, 15,
            10, 15, 11
        };
    }
}