TextMesh Pro - Advanced Text Rendering for Unity - Beta now available in Asset Store

howdy -

I'm having an issue w/ Anti-Aliasing.
We're using version 0.1.52 beta 3.1.


When my scene launches, some text appears to be un-anti-aliased, or minimally so.
But then while the scene is running, if i change any minor detail of the TMPro component, AA kicks in.
AA remains in place even when I undo the minor change.

Here's a before/after, captured from the scene editor:


on some platforms (eg Kindle Fire Kids Edition 7") the un-antialised text is pretty
noticable.

 

this turned out to be related to a zoom effect i had on the object's parent.
the local scale was being adjusted to pretty small at scene load, and then later expanded to normal size.
the work-around was to call SetAllDirty() when the expansion had finished.
(taking care not to do that every frame, of course)

 

Sorry to butt in but if anyone's reading, it's best to head over to the TextMesh Pro site where the author always has the latest version and top notch support. I don't use it much but I see how good it is. Added in case anyone wants quicker support.

 

Thank you Hippo for "butting in" as I never got the Alert from the Unity forum and completely missed this post.

The issue was indeed related to scaling where the scale of the object needs to be uniform and passed to the shader. Since you were modifying the scale via script where the text object was unaware of such change, the SDF scale was not getting updated. In theory you should only have to call SetVerticesDirty() to force the update. Changing the scale of the object would not require an update of the material SetMaterialDirty() (for masking mostly) nor a change to the layout SetLayoutDirty().

 

TextMeshPro 0.1.54 Beta 1 Release Notes
This release is available to all registered users of the product on the TextMesh Pro User Forum.

New Features and Functionality

• Added support for Multi Fonts & Sprites. I am currently working on an updated video for this feature. In the meantime see the following video which will still provide a good overview of this new feature.
• Added new <font> tag. Note the name of the font and material are case sensitive.
  • [o]<font="IMPACT SDF">
  • [o]<font="IMPACT SDF" material="IMPACT SDF - Drop Shadow">
  • [o]</font> switches to the previously used font.
  • [o]<font="Default"> switches to the default font assigned to the text object.
• Revised <sprite> tag implementation.
  • [o]<sprite=index>
  • [o]<sprite="Name of Sprite Asset" index=index>
  • [o]<sprite="Name of Sprite Asset" name="Name of sprite">
  • [o]As per the previous release, the "tint" and "color" attribute can also be added to the sprite tag.
• Added support for Font Fallback which can be defined in the TMP Settings file. See the following video for further details.
  

Improvements & Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the reference to the CanvasRenderer could be lost.
• Fixed an issue where the text alignment could be wrong when using Overflow - Ellipsis or Truncate mode.
• Fixed issue where anchor positions of the Text Container when loading a scene created with a previous version of TextMesh Pro.
• Fixed an issue with scaling where the text could be rendered as blocks.
• Improved how fading of the face, outline and underlay portions of the text is handled in the shader.
• Updated the Font Asset Creator to improve handling of OTF fonts.
• Improved handling of ZTest when using the Canvas system.
• Fixed a few minor issue related to the Text Container and newly added support for RectTransform.
• Fixed an issue related to text alignment when using sprites.
• Improved handling of Line Height and Line Spacing.
• Font Asset Creator now shows Hex value of missing glyphs as well as Decimal value.
• Improved handling of Undo / Redo related to Material Preset Drag-n-Drop functionality.
• Updated how the SDF Scale is updated when only the scale or lossyScale of a text object is changed.
• Fixed an issue where using the color or tint attribute with the sprite tag would affect all sprites.
• Fixed null reference issue which could occur when getting preferred values on disabled objects.
• Added _ClipRect property to the material debug panel. This is used for debug purposes.
• Improved upgrade compatibility with pre Unity 4.6 releases.
• Added tintAllSprites to TMP Settings.
• Kerning is now disabled by default in the TMP Settings file since most users don't import kerning pairs in the first place.
• Fixed a minor issue related to word counting when using quotes at the start of the text input.
• Fixed a minor issue with the <nobr> </nobr> tags not working with East Asian languages.
• Updated the list of leading and following line breaking characters for East Asian Languages.
• Added support for Zero Width Space.
• Added the beta RTL support to the TMP UGUI component.
• Fixed an issue where re-parenting a text object to another canvas result in some events being ignored.
• Added new overload for SetText to use StringBuilder.
• SDF scale encoding is now using the lossyscale.y due to Unity's CanvasScaler change in 5.4.0b5.
• Repacked the sprites used in the Default Sprite Asset into a smaller 512 X 512 texture.

Note (1) - I will also have a separate release of this new version for Unity 5.0 / 5.1 available later today or worst case tomorrow.

 

Example of using the new Multi Font & Sprite feature along with Font Fallback to access icons from font library like Font Awesome.

 

Hey guys I am having a kerning issue with a font. This font works fine in Unity text asset, photoshop, and numerous other pieces of software. See attached image.



I am using an otf font and even leaving the settings alone on the asset creator the font still does this. Any suggestions would be great. And no I can not use a different font.

 

There was an issue with some OTF fonts in the previous release. The latest release available on the TextMesh Pro user forum has this fixed.

There is also a separate plugin package available on the user forum in case you can't updraft to the latest release.

 

Hi
I want control TMPro Object's render queue.
So I did edit to TMPro_SDF.shader
SubShader -> Tags -> Queue = Transparent-1
and another shader Queue edit too. (Transparent, Transparent+1 ...)
but It's not work. TMPro Object is always high level render queue.
So I try edit another value (Ex : Transparent, Transparent+1..-1..+2...etc). with another shader.(all of using shader)
I want just same render queue level, another object.
How can I control render queue??

here is my screen.

 

If you are using the normal TextMesh Pro component, in the Extra Settings panel, you can control the sorting layer and sorting order. There shouldn't be any need to make changes to the shader code as you would be modifying all the materials using that shader.

 

I made further improvements to the Font Fallback system where you will now be able to assign Fallback Font Assets for individual Font Assets in the Font Asset Editor Panel.

Here is an example where I have a text object using two different fonts which are ARIAL SDF and IMPACT SDF. Neither of these font assets include the Greek character for Omega "Ω" or "\u03a9". So without the Fallback Font Asset support, we would be getting something like this.



Now by creating another Font Asset for ARIAL which only includes the Greek characters which are from U+0370 to U+3FF Unicode range and assigning this new Font Asset as a Fallback to our main ARIAL SDF Font Asset in the Font Asset Editor Panel (as seen below) the missing glyph (square) is now replaced by the Greek Omega character from this new Fallback Font Asset.







Now in the current release where the Fallback Font Assets are only defined in the TMP Settings file, TextMesh Pro would search thru this list of Font Assets and use the first Font Asset which includes this missing character. So as per our example here, we would end up with the ARIAL version of the Omega character although using the <font> our text is now using IMPACT SDF. With this new change which will be included in the next release, TextMesh Pro will now search thru the Fallback Font Assets of the currently used Font Asset and then if it is unable to locate the missing glyph, look through the list of Fallback Font Assets defined in the TMP Settings file. Below is the result using the new implementation where you can see the IMPACT version of the Omega character is used.

 

How much costs this feature from a performance point of view? Is the search done per frame or just when a new text is assigned? Does this feature come with a performance impact, even if I don't use fallback font assets?

 

The search is potentially done when the text is parsed due to the text changing and only if there is a missing glyph. There is no real performance impact as a result of this. Even the search is fast since all the glyph lookups are using dictionaries. I also made other performance optimization so overall performance should be better.

Now keep in mind that if you do end up with missing glyphs which requires using additional font assets / materials in the same text object. Each material in Unity results in (1) draw call so in the example above, you have 4 different materials in use thus resulting in 4 draw calls for that object. Note that dynamic batching will still take effect between all those objects.

In terms of the performance impact of 1 draw call vs. 4, you would have to go back to an old iPhone 3gs to see any impact. There is a big difference between 10 draw calls and several 100 draw calls but 1 to a few dozens is nothing on the mobile devices out there today.

 

Is there any way to define where inside a word can be wrapped into the new line? A tag or special character eventually?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_hyphen

A not so nice but working workaround is this.

Code (CSharp):

1. <size=0.001> </size>

basicly a minimal size space that will allow to break the line.

 

I'll take a look and see what I can come up with.

 

Not so urgent. The workaround will do for a while and apparently nobody else had any problem with it.

 

Hi, I'm using TextMeshPro to do a reading app. I use TextMeshProUGUI with component ContentSizeFitter to have the recttransform auto expanded vertically as in the picture.



Currently the word "After" is highlight, when it read down the bottom to the word "storey", at that moment I need to check that the next word will be invisible so it should move the rect transform up a distance.

So how can I detect that the next word is not visible?
Thanks a lot

 

The challenge here is that the text is actually all visible since it all fits inside the RectTransform. Parts of the text appears to be not visible because of the UI,Mask.

I guess, by using the TextMeshPro.textInfo.lineInfo[].ascender you could check if the current line exceeds the vertical bounds of the UI,Mask RectTransform (in worldspace)? Since the Ascender is the top of that line (based on the font metrics) you'll know if it is in view or not. That's just one potential idea.

P.S. Add the TextInfoDebugTool to a text object to allow you to see the bounds of each character, words or lines. This should help troubleshoot this while you work on it.

 

Just a heads up. Upgraded to Unity 5.3.3p2 and had weird problem with fonts not getting antialiased. Was using latest TMP Asset Store version (0.1.52 beta 3.1). Updating to latest version found in the forums fixed the issue (Unity 5.4 Beta 1b). In case somebody else runs into the same problem.

Also needed to nuke the TMP folder before updating, as Unity's asset importer messed up things really bad otherwise.

It would be nice if the asset store version would be updated once in a while -- what is the reason it's not getting updated?

 

New releases are always available on the user forum first. Then depending on user feedback, eventually make their way to the Unity Asset Store.

I am getting ready to update the Asset Store releases (both 5.0 ~ 5.1 and 5.2 thru 5.4). I'll most likely do that over the weekend.

P.S. I also get a lot more feedback from users on the TextMesh Pro user forum which is incredibly beneficial.

 

I am awaiting acceptance into the TMP forum... hopefully to come soon as I'm having issues as a TMP newb.

Thanks!

 

I got you approved

 

Thank you Stephan!

 

Hi, is ir possible hide the big T box that i see in the editor? It difficult somw works in the editor.

Regards

 

Yes. Just change the size or disable whichever icon you wish to modify in the Gizmos panel on the top right side of the Scene View.

 

Thank You

 

Hey guys, this may have been asked before but I cannot find any posts on the subject. Is there any way to build fonts without using the GUI font creator? The trouble is that we have different fonts and then different character sets (chineses, efigs, etc) and then on top of that different material attributes for shadows etc. This means that for any one font there are upward of 8 alternative TMP assets. Does anyone have suggestions on how to manage and update these fonts?

Thanks

 

I presume that by "GUI font creator" you are referring to the TextMesh Pro Font Asset Creator located in the Unity Window Menu?

In terms of the multiple font assets, you should only have one for any given language unless you are using the Fallback system introduced in the latest release available on the user forum. For you different visual looks, you should be using material presets created with the Context Menu Duplicate as explained in this video

In the end you will end up with (1) Font Asset for a given language and as many material presets for the visual styles like Outline, Shadow, etc...

 

Yes.

Thanks I'll check that out. Even if we use the material presets will we still need multiple assets because we have multiple fonts (e.g. arial, impact, etc)? And if this is the case then it still means creating a lot of fonts manually.

 

There is no way around creating (1) Font Asset per font (e.g. Arial, Impact, etc.) as even assuming you could combine the rastered glyphs into the same font atlas texture, the metrics of these fonts are very different font one another.

For most languages only (1) Font Asset will be needed as most Latin based languages don't contain that many characters. So only one font asset would be required for efigs with room to spare for cyrillic for instance. The only languages that require their own font asset are Chinese, Japanese and Korean and you might actually need to have some fallbacks for them as well. Having said that, once the Font Assets are created, you can leave behind the font.ttf or .otf as they are no longer required.

For all those languages, I don't see you needing more than a few font assets where there is no duplication in the characters they contain. Certainly not 8 per font as I believe for that you might have not been using material presets and instead were duplicating font assets to get variations with different material properties to get different visual styles like Outline, Shadows, etc... Those visual variations are achieved by creating material presets which reference the default font atlas texture of those font assets. This is very efficient is there is no duplication of data and those materials are tiny in terms of size.

 

Certainly the material properties is very useful and will drastically cut down the amount of fonts required. So thanks for all the help

 

Feel free to reach out any time and be sure to register and check the TextMesh Pro user forum as a lot of that information exists there.

 

Added the ability to select Material Presets from the TextMesh Pro Editor Panel. The list is filtered to only show Material Presets matching the currently selected Font Asset.



This should further improve the workflow in terms of assigned different material presets to your text objects.

 

Hi,
I've run a tool to change all of our existing TMPro text to use a base font asset and material variants, as in the video 'Q&A January 2015'. I've set the font asset and then the shared material in code (as it's done in the video) and saved out the prefab/scene containing the TextMeshProUGUI object.

We've encountered a strange issue as a consequence, though. All of our underlay offsets, although showing the same value, look like they've doubled. In other words, the drop shadows look much further away across the board. It's almost like the material is now being processed twice.

Have you seen this before, and is there anything we can do to fix it?

 

The visual range of material properties like Outline, Underlay, etc. is determined by the sampling point size of the text combined with the padding value. So a value of 0.1 on a material whose font asset' sampling point size was 60 with a padding value of 6 (pixels out of 60 point size) will be further away visually then 0.1 with sampling point size of 120 and padding of 6. In this case half the visual range. See the FAQ question 2 and 11 on the TextMesh Pro user forum.

Material Presets created with the Material Context Menu - Duplicate are derived from the original Font Asset and thus share the same font atlas texture and as a result should have the same sampling point size and padding values. Take a look in the Debug Panel of the Material Inspector to see if the Gradient Scale is the same for all those materials. Gradient Scale is padding value + 1.

 

Is there a guide to the shader parameters in the material settings? I'd like to animate the light angle on my text.

 

See the following shader information from the support section of the TextMesh Pro user forum.

There are also several posts about modifying material properties and some of the technical details since for some of those property groups Shader Keywords are used. There is also a utility class ShaderUtilities which makes it easier to access those material properties.

Again all this information is on the TextMesh Pro User Forum. Here is a link to one such thread about changing glow in this case.

 

Release 0.1.54 Beta 2 of TextMesh Pro with new TMP - UI - Input Field is now available on the user forum. This release includes a few new features and some minor bug fixes. See the release notes on the TextMesh Pro user forum for details.

Note: The TMP - UI - Input Field is based on the Unity - UI - Input Field and mirrors its functionality. This is the first release (alpha) of this new component. Rich Text and Multi Font & Sprites isn't support yet in the Input Field but I will adding such support in the new few releases.

 

I just spent hours to generated an usable CJK font atlas. Gee, there're so many characters and hopefully I contained most of them(32k).

So here's the thing, I used Noto Sans CJK Regular and you can feel free to use it since it's an open source font(SIL). Feel free to open an issue if you think anything is important but missing.

Download from Github

Cheers.

 

With the addition of the new Fallback Font System in TextMesh Pro, I am not certain I would create a single large Font Asset anymore.

For CJK, I would create separate Font Assets for each language. For each, I would create a primary Font Asset which contains all the known character in the project and then create addition Font Assets that contain the other characters likely to be needed and assign these as Fallbacks to this primary Font Assets. See the following video about the Fallback Font System if you have not already.

For Chinese for instance, you would have a primary Font Asset that contains all the known characters in your project. Then using the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters which is broken up into 3 groups containing (3500, 3000 and 1605 characters). These are based on frequency of use of those characters. The 1st Fallback Font Asset would contain the 3500 minus those already included in the Primary. The 2nd Fallback would contain the 3000 minus those in the Primary and the last Fallback would contain the 1605 minus those already in the Primary. Depending on how many characters ended up in the Primary, it might be possible to further combine these.

Just to recap, since the Primary Font Asset would contain all the known text which is likely to be less than 1500 characters (since most project interestingly enough don't actually use that many), only the Primary would be used. The only time, the Fallbacks would get used is when user input comes into play. So for most text object, you would have (1) draw call and then for other text object where user input is used and assuming they use at least one character from each of the Font Assets (Fallback) you would have (4) draw calls for those objects which is pretty efficient.

For the other languages like Japanese and Korean, I would also create a Primary with all the known text for each and then split the remaining characters into Fallback Font Assets. I am not sure how those would get split up individually but perhaps there is also some frequency of use data available for those languages as well.

I hope this information helps.

P.S. The latest release with Multi Font & Sprite support is only available on the TMP user forum at this time. So be sure to register there and get the latest release.

 

I made further improvements today on support for Line Breaking for CJK which follows the rules related to leading and following characters. Here is an example which I hope is correct



If you are fluent in Japanese, please let me know if I this appears to be correct both in terms of the language and line breaking.

 

I'm a Chinese and my Japanese is really poor. lol
Thanks for the reply and that video is nice. However, I can't find that fallback font assets in TMP settings. I re-imported it from the asset store again but no luck. Am i using a outdated release?

 

I would love to get a similar sentence to test for Chinese. The sentence can also include mixed language like English words in it as well.

As per the (P.S.) in my earlier reply, the latest release with support for Multi Font & Sprites along with Fallback Fonts is only available on the TextMesh Pro user forum.

 

Ah good, I'll go get it now lol
I can help with the Chinese test, post here then @ me or email me if you prefer.

 

If you could provide me with an appropriate sentence that I could use to show this functionality, it would be great. You can PM me the sentence on the user forum or make a post about it.

Got you approved. The latest release is located in the "TMPro - Alpha & Beta Releases" section of the user forum.

Should you have any questions or require assistance, feel free to post in the appropriate section of the user forum or to just reach out to me via email or whatever. I am here to help.

 

Made some improvements to the Font Asset Creator today. More specifically the ability to retrieve the list of characters contains in a previously created font asset. This will be especially useful when trying to add or remove characters from an existing font asset.

This new functionality works is available with "Character Set - Custom Range, Custom Unicode Range and Custom Characters".

 

I was wandering if such a feature is already available and I can't see it or if it's something you think could be easily added:
I have a text with "Char Spacing Option" set to, say, 2.5. I'd like to say "if the number of lines required to render the text is greater than X, then reduce the "Char Spacing Option" down to a value low enough to make it fit in X lines (but never drop below 0 this way). If still it can't fit in X lines, then maintain the 2.5 "Char Spacing Option" as long as the text fits in X+1 lines, otherwise reduce it to make it fit in X+!. And so on...

 

I think this is something doable but need to give it some thoughts.

I am currently focused on trying to get a new release out but will get back to you after that.

 

Hi there,

Sorry to bother you, but I'm facing quite a problem. We have our game localized into Russian, but I can't create a font asset to use in our TMP texts. I have a font that uses Cyrillic and until now it is working just fine in our menus and stuff (2DToolkit), but when I try to use the Font Asset Creator of TMP it does not properly get the right characters.

Is there any special procedure with that kind of languages? Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I suppose I need to use the 'Characters from file' option but I don't know how to create a TextAsset for that, nor the setup I need.


Thanks in advance.

 

See the following video which covers the Font Asset Creation process including handling of different languages and how to add those different characters into your Font Assets.

Equally important is learning about Material Presets and how to use them in TextMesh Pro. See the following video about this.