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.