Using HEX colors in unity.

2018-05-01

Unity supports hex colors with TryParseHtmlString and by creating a Color32 object and feed it hex values for r, g, b and a.

ToColor extension method

Many years ago I wrote a ToColor extension method to use in XAML apps. It converts strings like FFFF00, #FF0000 and #FF345699 to XAML colors and brushes. I modified the code to support unity colors and here is how you can use it in your project:

Create script StringEx
Replace the generated code in StringEx with:

using System;
using UnityEngine;

public static class StringEx
{
// Example: "#ff000099".ToColor() red with alpha ~50%
    // Example: "ffffffff".ToColor() white with alpha 100%
    // Example: "00ff00".ToColor() green with alpha 100%
    // Example: "0000ff00".ToColor() blue with alpha 0%
    public static Color ToColor(this string color)
{
if (color.StartsWith("#", StringComparison.InvariantCulture))
{
    color = color.Substring(1); // strip #
        }

if (color.Length == 6)
{
    color += "FF"; // add alpha if missing
        }

var hex = Convert.ToUInt32(color, 16);
var r = ((hex & 0xff000000) >> 0x18) / 255f;
var g = ((hex & 0xff0000) >> 0x10) / 255f;
var b = ((hex & 0xff00) >> 8) / 255f;
var a = ((hex & 0xff)) / 255f;

return new Color(r, g, b, a);
}
}

How to use the ToColor extension method?

ToColor accepts:

hex strings with or without leading # characters
hex strings in RGB or RGBA format
and is case-insensitive.

Here are some examples:

var red = "#ff0000".ToColor();
var green = "00FF00".ToColor();
var blue50percent = "#0000ff99".ToColor();

If you feed the function with any other format, it will crash spectacularly.