Text Mesh Pro - The Ultimate Text Solution for Unity - Powerful & Flexible - Advanced Text Rendering

Took me a while but I was finally able to reproduce it. Good catch since no one else has ever found this one. I'll take a look at it in the morning as well.

 

Hello,

Just bought your great package!

I've a question (feature request?)

Is it possible to add a tag <color=255,255,255,255> instead of <#ffffffff> ?

I try to update a single char in some text using script.
I just update TextMeshPro.text with the text including the color tag somewhere.

It works for now but converting int values to hex creates also many strings.(see sample code)

Code (CSharp):

1. //Sample
2. Color32 c = m_textMeshPro.color;
3. StringBuilder b = new StringBuilder();
4. int alpha = 78;
5. b.Append("<#");
6. b.Append(c.r.ToString("X2"));
7. b.Append(c.g.ToString("X2"));
8. b.Append(c.b.ToString("X2"));
9. b.Append(alpha.ToString("X2"));
10. b.Append(">");
11. b.Append(appendColoredText);
12. b.Append("</color>");
13. m_textMeshPro.text += b.ToString();

updating tag using byte values would be a lot neater imho...

Or maybe you have another soluting?

Thanks in advance.
Greetz,
G

 

How should I implement simplified chinese, japanese, korean and so on ? Simplified chinese has over 20K symbols and I dont know how should I fit them in 2K texture since I deploy on old smartphones... Also when I tried it Unity hang up :-/

 

First, I fixed both of the minor issues you reported last night. The fix will be in the next beta release and eventually available in the next release to the Asset Store.

In terms of CJK support and handling of super large characters sets, I don't have an ideal solution yet. Here are the current options available.

I do have several users who use language files and generate their Font Assets using the "Character from File" option to generate the characters uses in their title / projects. Basically, they create static font assets for all the characters that is known / used in their projects. For handling use input where the characters may not be known ahead of time, they still use Unity's Dynamic Font system.

This seems to be an ok compromise given the user input text tends to be smaller and plain whereas the text that is known in the title is typically larger and stylized more which is where they use TextMesh Pro.

Having said that, I do have plans to add support for a Dynamic SDF Font System in TextMesh Pro. I don't have an ETA yet but this solution will offer the same benefits as Unity Dynamic Font system in terms of being able to add character dynamically to the font asset at run-time which does have a performance impact. But unlike Unity Dynamic System which can grow to massive sizes as the same characters can be added multiple times in the atlas to handle point sizes and styles like bold, the Dynamic SDF Font System in TextMesh Pro won't suffer from that so it should be a very nice solution for handling CJK and larger characters sets.

 

I believe someone had suggested a workaround: Since 4k textures are unsupported on some platforms, there could be a choice to generate a RGB (or even RGBA) 2K texture, where each channel has different characters stored. It would pack roughly 3/4ths (or in case of RGBA roughly the same) of what a 4k texture would pack and it would be compatible with any device.

 

Another example of an Animated Env Map

 

Not sure how I missed your post so my apologies for the late reply

Upon reflection on this, if you are after controlling the individual color of each character, instead of using color tags and messing with strings, I would create a script to change the vertex colors of those characters instead.

I would use the TextMeshPro.textInfo class which exposes information about each character and what vertices they use as well as the mesh itself. With that information, you could alter the vertex colors of individual or groups of characters.

I am pretty slammed right now trying to get the next release out but I would recommend you take the time to register to the TextMesh Pro User Forum and then give this a shot and should you need any assistance post on the forum and I'll try to help you out. For certain, once I get the next release out, I can create a script to do this as I think it would actually be pretty cool

 

@gpvd While waiting for an answer from Unity, I had a few minutes to kill.



Using the TextMeshPro.textInfo class as described in my post above, I created a small script that changes the vertex colors of each character (from first to last) and then changes the color and repeats. This is using a coroutine to control the speed.

Now essentially, this same script could be used to offset the vertices to create a jitter effect or other things. Again, this is all pretty simple since the TextMeshPro.textInfo.meshInfo contains all the mesh data and the TextMeshPro.textInfo.characterInfo[] hold information about each character including which vertex Index is used for each character.

BTW: The text properties can actually be changed live while this script runs. Meaning the text could be changed dynamically or the outline or the alignment, etc...

 

Thank you very much for the tips.. i'll try it with meshinfo.
Think this could indeed be used for some nice char anim possibilities.
Greetz
G

 

Animating the Colors of Individual Characters
Here is a short video showing how this is done. In the video, you can also see the script that I am using to do it. I'll include this script in the next release of TextMesh Pro.

 

Getting there ... simple script using the TextMeshPro.textInfo.meshInfo to animated the vertices's positions.

 

This is great, I think combined with DOTween this should be very easy to handle

 

But wait there is more using an animation curve



P.S. This makes me think of fishing.

 

Hi! Is it possible to set the font material in the editor for a textmeshpro object? I know I can set the font asset, but the material is tied to the font. It seems to be possible to set fontSharedMaterial via code, but is it possible in the inspector view?

 

I am really looking forward to the next release. Any other example scripts you think might be useful please include them also.

 

Hey Stephan,

tnx for the sample. Works like a charm now!


@BTStone; Indeed, very very nice combi with DOtween!

Greetz

G

 

In the inspector, you can drag-n-drop the new material (provided it was derived from the same font asset using the Context Menu Duplicate) on top of the text object. You can also assign it directly to the Renderer (material field).

 

I'll be cleaning up some of the sample scripts as I would like to make sure you can (while this script is running) change any of the properties of the text object. Minor tweaks but more fun to play with and demo

 

Took a short break from working on the support for Unity 4.6's Auto Layout System.

This is another simple script which tweaks the position of the vertices. What is kind of cool about this, is that I can actually change the text or properties of the object like alignment, character spacing, etc and the letters keep on dangling around I'll try to make a short video showing that off tomorrow.

 

Using a more appropriate font (.ttf)

 

I have been getting a bunch of these errors

UnassignedReferenceException: The variable m_renderer of TextMeshPro has not been assigned.
You probably need to assign the m_renderer variable of the TextMeshPro script in the inspector.
TMPro.TextMeshPro.LoadFontAsset () (at Assets/TextMesh Pro/Scripts/TMPro_Private.cs:483)
TMPro.TextMeshPro.set_font (TMPro.TextMeshProFont value) (at Assets/TextMesh Pro/Scripts/TextMeshPro.cs:49)
TMPro.TextMeshPro. OnValidate () (at Assets/TextMesh Pro/Scripts/TMPro_Private.cs:372)
UnassignedReferenceException: The variable m_renderer of TextMeshPro has not been assigned.
You probably need to assign the m_renderer variable of the TextMeshPro script in the inspector.
TMPro.TextMeshPro.LoadFontAsset () (at Assets/TextMesh Pro/Scripts/TMPro_Private.cs:465)
TMPro.TextMeshPro.set_font (TMPro.TextMeshProFont value) (at Assets/TextMesh Pro/Scripts/TextMeshPro.cs:49)
TMPro.TextMeshPro. OnValidate () (at Assets/TextMesh Pro/Scripts/TMPro_Private.cs:372)
UnityEditorInternal.InternalEditorUtility:GetGameObjectInstanceIDFromComponent(Int32)
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()

A user had been getting the same errors (on page 3 of this thread), But I was able to figure out what was causing them, if you enable (lets say underlay) and then downgrade the shader to mobile/Distance Field (surface) so that underlay doesn't exist anymore I got errors. The fix is to switch it back and turn what you can't use off and then downgrade the shader. Errors gone.

 

Thank you for taking the time to provide this information. It is definitely possible that swapping shaders in some particular order could result in some variable / state confusion. I'll take a look at this to see if I can reproduce it and then figure out some mechanism to prevent it from occurring.

EDIT: I just tried with version 0.1.44 and I can't seem to get those errors. Are you able to reproduce it every time? Do you have a list of steps from object creation that will enable me to reproduce it? It is also possible that this could occur on assembly reload when some script is edited.

 

I can't seem to reproduce anymore :S

 

I have only seen it occur a few times in months across 100's of users. It has to be some weird combination as I can never reproduce it either. Assigning a new shader or new material would reset whatever weird state the object is in.

Just let me know if you do happen to come across it again.

 

Having trouble locating the FaceColor property using Playmaker (see image)


any ideas?

 

Hi =)

I have a question about your plugin, my company developping Karoke and i want to know if with your plugin, i can do a mask of letter at runtime.

I have Background (Color or Texture) and i want my Lyrics (pixels by pixels ) at runtime take the color of Background but without to see the backgroung, is-it possible ?

Something like that :

Thx U,
Cindy

 

I have a feeling that because I am using Color32 (in version 0.1.44) Playmaker isn't seeing it. Please take the time to register to the TextMesh Pro user forum and I can get you access to the Beta of version 0.1.45 which I believe is using Color which might do the trick.

 

That should be possible. Take a look at this previous post from one of my users.

Let me know if you need any additional information on this. I'll be travelling today but I'll be checking in from time to time.

 

Does this addon work in 2D? Because so far I cannot get the text to show.

 

It does work in 2d.

What version of Unity are you using?

Are you using a camera set to orthographic mode? If so make sure you enable the orthographic mode in the extra settings.

If that doesn't help, in the example scenes, the point size scene uses orthographic mode. Load that one and see what happens.

Everything should work as I have lots of users using it in 2d.

I am traveling today but I should be able to check back in about 3 hrs.

 

hey there , just purchased textmesh pro, its great. is there any place i can download the code for the animation vertices eamples you have shown?

 

Sorry about the delay in response. I spent most of the day driving (900 miles) and just got back. I'll post that script tomorrow when I wake up on the TextMesh Pro User Forum. Please make sure you register to be able to download that script

 

Looking over this script to make a few tweaks and then I'll upload it to the TextMesh Pro Forum.

 

Hello. I wanted to know if you have any fallback mechanism to use an alternate font(s) when a character is not found? Our game has localization in 20 languages including simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Is it possible to set 2 or more SDF Font assets so that when a label needs a certain glyph out of the main atlas it can go to the fallback SDF font?

Thanks in advance,

Alejandro.

 

In the latest private beta, when a missing glyph is encountered, I display a red X to indicate a glyph is missing. I could replace that X by the missing glyph square but I don't think either of those scenarios are ideal.

How do you see this fallback working? Let's assume that we run into a missing Chinese glyph. What should we display instead?

 

Made some tweaks to the example Vertex Attribute Animation script. In this example I am applying and offset to the position of each character as well as random rotation.


These changes now make it possible to change the text and property of the object at run-time while those FX are still on-going.

 

Ideally we should be able to select a Fallback font material, so when you encounter a missing glyph, you can use that second material to fill in the missing glyphs. This way we can define a general purpose material for western glyphs, and the an fallback to say a Chinese font. Ideally it should work like Unity's Dynamic Font where the Fallback can cascade to multiple fonts. This is an excerpt for Unity's Manual on Fonts:

When Unity tries to render text with a dynamic font, but it cannot find the font (because Include Font Data was not selected, and the font is not installed on the user machine), or the font does not include the requested glyph (like when trying to render text in east Asian scripts using a latin font), then it will try each of the fonts listed in the Font Names field, to see if it can find a font matching the font name in the project (with font data included) or installed on the user machine which has the requested glyph. If non of the listed fallback fonts are present and have the requested glpyh, Unity will fall back to a hard-coded global list of fallback fonts, which contains various international fonts commonly installed on the current runtime platform.

More on http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-Font.html

One more question. We have a project that was implemented using EZGUI. We want to explore replacing sprite text with TextMesh Pro. Do you have pointers on how to do this (especially if we want to preserve cropping).

Thanks again!

Alejandro.

 

Hello stephan,

A question related to forcemeshupdate()
Is it possible to set an initial alpha value for some characters in the given text?
right now, when i first call forcemeshupdate(), wait 1 frame and then set the text with various colors, the colors are set, but alpha stays at value 255.
Im using textmeshpro 1.44.

Tnx in advance.
Greetz,
G

 

Until I implement the Dynamic SDF System for TextMesh Pro, I don't really have a easy / clean way of handling fallback on missing glyphs.

In terms of how to manage that until then, I would get a list of all the characters used in your title and create the Font Assets for each of the languages using the "Characters from File" option. For all languages with the exception of CJK, all the characters for a given font can fit into a single SDF Asset. Since most titles (even CJK) typically use less than 2000 individual characters unless they require user input, all the required characters should still fit into a single SDF Font Asset which will then work for all point size and scale and give you unlimited visual styles via material presets. For CJK where user input is required, I would continue to use Unity's Dynamic system. Since user input text tends to be smaller and most of the time unstyled, that should be fine as the nicer / more stylized and larger known text would be using TextMesh Pro.

I am in communication with Brady the author of EZ GUI. He is taking a look at making our products work nicely together. I'll check with him and get back to you.

EDIT: Just exchanged emails with Brady and he says "Please let your customer know that it is in the works on my end".

 

Just curious why you are using ForceMeshUpdate()?

Yes and there are different ways of doing this. How are you trying to set that up right now and can you give more insight on what you are trying to accomplish which will help me give you better information.

 

Hey Stephan,

Using ForceMeshUpdate() according to your given example on changing individual character color.

I'm using textmeshpro to enable / disable powerups.
An enabled powerup has Color32(0,0,255,255).
A disabled powerup has Color32(255,0,0,100).

The text is something like "power: |||||" ; where the last 5 chars represent the powerups.
- I first set the text,
- then call ForceMeshUpdate(),
- start a coroutine which waits until end of frame
- on the next frame i'm trying to set all powerups to disabled color,
by writing the color to the mesh, See code example
- When done, the colors are red, but alpha value is 255.

I dived a little in your code and saw something of using the alpha value to pass normal/bold to the shader.
Is this related to this?


Many thanks for looking into it.

Code (CSharp):

1.    
2. private void setSubText_MeshColor()
3.     {
4.  
5.         Color32[] newVertexColors = owner.m_textMeshPro.textInfo.meshInfo.vertexColors;
6.         int vertexIndex = owner.m_textMeshPro.textInfo.characterInfo[indexNumber].vertexIndex;
7. //currentColor = Color32(255,0,0,100)
8.         newVertexColors[vertexIndex | 0] = currentColor;
9.         newVertexColors[vertexIndex | 1] = currentColor;
10.         newVertexColors[vertexIndex | 2] = currentColor;
11.         newVertexColors[vertexIndex | 3] = currentColor;
12.  
13.         owner.m_textMeshPro.mesh.colors32 = newVertexColors;
14.  
15.  
16.     }

Greetz,

G

 

Well...

I got it working by using an alpha value > 127...
If this isnt' the preferred way i would like to get your advice. (Or maybe i should wait on your examples in the next version?)

P.s. newVertexColors[vertexIndex | n] should of cours be newVertexColors[vertexIndex + n].

Greetz,
G

 

You are trying to make the 5 bars "|||||" Light up one at a time. Correct?

Here is another option which uses an array of strings to define the power. The color tag in TextMesh Pro has two forms. One with 3 Hex pairs and the other with 4 Hex pairs with the 4th pair being alpha.



Here is the script which you can attach to an empty GameObject.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. using UnityEngine;
3. using System.Collections;
4. using TMPro;
5.  
6. public class SandBox_07 : MonoBehaviour {
7.  
8.  
9.     private TextMeshPro m_textMeshPro;
10.  
11.     private string[] k_powerLevels = new string[] { "<#FF000080>|||||</color>",
12.                                                     "<#FF000080>||||<#0000FFFF>|</color>",
13.                                                     "<#FF000080>|||<#0000FFFF>||</color>",
14.                                                     "<#FF000080>||<#0000FFFF>|||</color>",
15.                                                     "<#FF000080>|<#0000FFFF>||||</color>",
16.                                                     "<#0000FFFF>|||||</color>" };
17.  
18.     void Awake()
19.     {  
20.         m_textMeshPro = gameObject.AddComponent<TextMeshPro>();
21.         m_textMeshPro.font =  Resources.Load("Fonts/IMPACT SDF", typeof(TextMeshProFont)) as TextMeshProFont; // Make sure the IMPACT SDF exists before calling this...
22.     }
23.  
24.     // Use this for initialization
25.     IEnumerator Start ()
26.     {
27.         int level = 0;
28.    
29.         while (true)
30.         {
31.             m_textMeshPro.text = "Power: " + k_powerLevels[level++ % 6];
32.  
33.             yield return new WaitForSeconds(0.1f);
34.         }    
35.     }    
36. }
37.  

 

Here is a Side by Side of TextMesh Pro vs. UI Text in Unity 4.6.

 

Well...

In an earlier post (#302 )i asked you how to tackle this problem, and gave you an example using tags.
The response you gave, was giving the example of using charInfo and meshInfo to update vertice data instead of using tags.
So thats why i'm using forseMeshUpdate now. (according to your explentation video in post #310)

I'm a little confused now ;-)... But i;ve already tackled the problem by setting the alpha value > 127.
So in fact my problem is solved now (however can only use 127 alpha values instead of 255).

Anyway, thank you very much for your great support.
p.s. if you have another suggestion i'd really ike to hear it.... and eagerly awaiting your next update...
p.p.s. Using tags isn't an option for me, because i use DOTween.
Greetz,

G

 

In terms of what to use and when, in the case of a reveal where all characters would change and the input text may change or unknown, I would go with the .maxVisibleCharacter way or the ForceMeshUpdate() but when what will change is kind of static (like in this case where the same 5 characters are the only ones changing) i would kind of favor the tags.

In the end, it comes down to what works best for you.

 

Example of a Font Asset which contains all Frequently Used Chinese Characters. This Asset is 2048 X 2048 and contains all 3500+ characters.



Sample Text using this Font Asset.


Close up of this sample with some added colors

 

Ok,
tnx!

Greetz,
G

 

Hello, I am looking at TextMesh Pro as a replacement for unity's UI Text implemented at 4.6. Looking at the example videos for 4.6, it appears to do everything I need, and it should be trivial to replace the existing Text objects.

However, 0.1.44 does not seem to have the components I need. I notice the example videos use a script called Text Mesh Pro UGUI which doesn't seem to be included in the download from the asset store.

Is there some update or download that I'm not seeing, or is the 4.6 support simply still in beta? If so, is there an eta on release?

Thanks!

 

The Unity 4.6 support is still under development. However, an early version is available to registered users of TextMesh Pro on the TextMesh Pro User Forum. Unless you need that functionality today, I would suggest waiting until perhaps Sunday as I should be releasing a new Beta with support for Unity 4.6 over the weekend. For certain, I encourage you to register and get the version when it becomes available on the TextMesh Pro User Forum.

P.S. After you have registered on the TextMesh Pro User Forum, send me a PM here to let me know you want access to the Private Beta as well as what your username is.