Improved Prefab Workflows: Nested Prefabs, Prefab Mode and Prefab Variants

Improved workflow

The new Prefab workflows, which are now available as previews, allow you to split up scenes and Prefabs on a granular level. This gives you greater flexibility, increases your productivity and enables you to work confidently without worrying about making time-consuming errors.

The improvements are based on surveys with more than 150 enterprise customers, numerous interviews, several usability tests and two game jams. The long-term goal has been not only to implement support for nesting, but to rethink the core Prefab workflows so different team members can simultaneously edit Prefabs confidently and efficiently.

Nesting

Previously, users were forced to choose between creating large monolithic Prefabs, like buildings, or more granular ones, like pieces of furniture, but they couldn't do both.

Now with support for nested Prefabs, a large building can be made up of many smaller room Prefabs, which in turn can be made up of multiple pieces of furniture Prefabs, and so on.

This makes it easier for teams of all sizes to:

Split up Prefabs into multiple entities for greater efficiency
Reuse any content, from small to large
Work on different parts of content simultaneously
Learn more
Prefab Variants
Flexible properties increase efficiency
As a default, a Prefab Variant inherits the objects and properties of the Prefab it is a variant of, but at the same time, you have the possibility to override those properties. This is similar to the concept of inheritance in object-oriented programming.

For example, if you had multiple door Prefabs, you could choose to make some of them a different color, while allowing the rest to inherit the existing Prefab color property. Any change made to the original door Prefab will affect the variants of it as well, except those properties which have been overridden.

Prefab Mode
Avoid time-consuming mistakes
A cornerstone of the new workflows, Prefab Mode enables you to edit in isolation. While this means that you will have to approach Prefab editing in a slightly different way, you can feel secure that any errors made will not have negative consequences.

[ethanpet]

Finally, that ticket has been open since 2009.

[KarnKaul]

This has been the single most anticipated/demanded feature of Unity for eons. Kudos to everyone involved!

[TanukiDigital]

This is a GAME CHANGER. So happy to finally see this, and it appears to be well thought out and working well.

[JingIeFett]

Never thought I'd see the day. Been using Unity since 2009 and I remember when Nested Prefabs were first added as a suggestion in the Unity Feedback page. This is historic.

[advanches]

And it only took like 10 years of waiting! (What a lovely voice BTW <3)

[TsetTsyung]

... and the variants is a great feature. Thank you so much for making this engine more awesome!

[seventeendegree]

This is probably a game changer for RTS developers.

[TsetTsyung]

Just installed 2018 this week. This morning I'm stumbled across Component presents (didn't even know it was a 'thing').

Never have I been so excited about a workflow improvement... I mean, it's brilliant! Save me so much time copying component values or setting up defaults in code. THANK YOU!

[twinjuke]

One of the features I wait for the most! The nested prefabs, the variants, the way the editor handles this all... I love it already!

[DmitriyYou]

Community award achieved: best video on the channel.
Thank you guys for making our dreams a reality.

[thomasanderson]

I've been hearing about this Prefab Nesting since jumping in the Unity bandwagon, now finally I see their utility.

[edfarage]

amazing stuff, i've been waiting for this for so long

[guru_laghima]

Best update ever. This makes updating nested prefabs so much easier, and he same goes for variations. Thank you!

[TheOriginalDarkGlitch]

Awesome. Been waiting quite a while for this. Unity keeps getting better and better.

LOTS of love for this new prefab workflow. Good Job SIR!

[AlexStrook]

We waited long but it was worth it, the implementation seems really strong !¸
Great video by the way, extremely well narrated and straight to the point

[Gildur]

Absolutely incredible feature that we've all been waiting for. Well done. I just hope this will work with UI elements as well.

[TsetTsyung]

So psyched for the nested prefab functionality. Having to change children prefab in prototype objects was such a faff, lol.

[sergeytaraban]

This is what we wanted for a long time! Awesome work Unity!

[thunderboxentertainment]

How has this feature only just been implemented??? Very happy to see this is now in! :D