Unity - Ignore mouse click outside of the UI

Question

I am having a problem with my in game UI menus like the pause menu.

When I hit the escape key the mouse cursor and pause UI is shown with 2 buttons "Continue" and "Exit". I have locked the player from moving when this UI is shown. But when I click outside of the buttons the mouse disappears and the player can move once again, the UI is still shown but it's lost focus or something.

Is there a simple way to stop this? I've seen some scripts which seem to try to catch this behavior and ignore the click but I'm hoping there is a property on the canvas or something that I can use built into the engine.

Thanks, Sam

Answer 1

Easiest way to handle this is to make a transparent background for your UI and let it catch the raycasts (if you're using them) or the mouse clicks so that the main game doesn't gain the focus of the program.

Another way would be to put an if on the mouse script you're using and reset focus to the UI after a click is made on anywhere but the UI (this will mean that the mouse will disappear momentarily and the player might be able to control stuff if you didn't do your pause checks properly).

I'd suggest using the first method. You could even add a blur effect (if you can manage to do it properly) to the layer of that background and give a more menu-like feeling. (this part is harder than it sounds)