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TextMesh Pro is now free and to be integrated

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Dave-Carlile, Feb 28, 2017.

  1. Dave-Carlile

    Dave-Carlile

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  2. ShilohGames

    ShilohGames

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    Wow, that is fantastic news.
     
  3. Player7

    Player7

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    Yes Unity should do more of this, raising the overall quality and features of the engine in not so good areas ..so about damn time ugui got some text improvements :)

    https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ui-text-character-limit.359729/

    Though I still finding the 64k vert limit per canvas an annoying problem to work around with large amounts of text, still TMP should help with having shadows on the text without adding to the problem.
     
    Rodolfo-Rubens and pcg like this.
  4. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Awesome to hear it will become native to Unity too. That's one entry off the wish list of a lot of people (like @Schneider21).
     
  5. boxhallowed

    boxhallowed

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    Are you friggin kidding me? Happy early birthday me!
     
    Dave-Carlile and theANMATOR2b like this.
  6. Schneider21

    Schneider21

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    Thanks for the tag to bring this to my attention! This is very exciting news!
     
    Dave-Carlile likes this.
  7. pcg

    pcg

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    Agree with @Player7
    Love the fact unity is taking quality asset store solutions to fill gaps in functionality.
    More please.
     
    TonyLi and Kronnect like this.
  8. Peter77

    Peter77

    QA Jesus

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    I wonder if the TextMesh Pro author is continueing to maintain it or if it's in Unity's hands now. It's at least listed under Unity Technologies in the store.
     
  9. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Below is the relevant snippet from the official forum for TMP:
    http://digitalnativestudios.com/forum/index.php?topic=1462.0
     
    pcg, Peter77 and Dave-Carlile like this.
  10. Player7

    Player7

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    I check TMP thread, and looks like large the large of amount of text with TMP is solved problem https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/t...ed-text-rendering.248636/page-28#post-2956627

    So I've just replaced most my text components with that and removed all the code for reducing old text out of those text components due to the vert limit. I don't think I would have bought the asset as I a had already worked around that problem earlier, though its improved a part of my game already with being able to display a lot through scrolling without the my previous workaround and text is better.. though changing the text shader settings isn't have anything effect short of using the preset materials (bug?), hopefully the integrated native solution has more improvements.. especially with no source, though its one of those assets I don't think many would have much reason to want to tinker with its source code anyway.
     
  11. Stephan_B

    Stephan_B

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    I am not going anywhere :)

    Furthermore and as I have said before, text is one of those things most of us take for granted and yet is far more sophisticated and complex than I could have ever imaged before I started working on TextMesh Pro. So rest assured that my work is far from done and I look forward to spending many years continuing to work on providing Unity users with the best text solution available for any game engine.

    P.S. If anyone runs into any issues, please be sure to post in the Unity UI section of the forum or submit a bug report.
     
  12. Player7

    Player7

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    @Stephan_B I get some errors with the new asset store release... nullref spam in published versions, and in editor just the error below repeated a few times at play... if the tmp component is below a scrollrect none of the material styling stuff works... also ton of similar errors in the example scene for 18 - ScrollRect & Masking & Layout

     
  13. Stephan-B

    Stephan-B

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    Please make sure all potential issues are reported in the Unity UI forum as it will make it easier to track / address individual reports. Having said that, I'll look into this right now.

    Update
    What version of Unity are you running? I just tried example 18 in Unity 5.3.4 and Unity 5.5.2 and no errors.
     
  14. Player7

    Player7

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    oh 5.6b9 :)
     
  15. Stephan_B

    Stephan_B

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    Release is not ready for Unity 5.6 yet. There are still a few outstanding issues related to the transform changes Unity made which should be addressed in beta 10 or 11. I also have to address some API changes with the Handles class. Once these are fixed, I'll create a new DLL for Unity 5.6.
     
    rakkarage likes this.
  16. schmosef

    schmosef

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    Congrats @Stephan_B!

    This is a great asset.

    I waited for what seemed like years for it to go on sale. Finally picked it up last November.

    Very happy that your hard work is now being shared with a larger audience.
     
  17. Not_Sure

    Not_Sure

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    Well damn, there's $60 down the drain! :D

    Good for them! It really is a fantastic asset.
     
    ilmario and aer0ace like this.
  18. 00christian00

    00christian00

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    Will you also work on improving dynamic fonts now that you are with Unity?
     
  19. Wild-Factor

    Wild-Factor

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    2 question:
    - For how long text mesh pro will be supported ?
    - Is it possible to have some vouchers for thoose who purchase it recently ?
     
    aer0ace likes this.
  20. Fera_KM

    Fera_KM

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    Oh, that's ..
    I have ambivalent feelings about this.
    I guess I should be happy for those that don't have it...
    But since I payed full price for it in November, $95 and have yet to use it's potential, it feels bad.
    Guess that teaches me to not buy things in asset store until I really need it.
     
    aer0ace likes this.
  21. tsangwailam

    tsangwailam

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    I read that TextMesh Pro will be intergrading with Unity 2017. It is safe to use in current project? So, it don't need to change a lot when upgrade in the future.
     
  22. SarfaraazAlladin

    SarfaraazAlladin

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    This is so cool! I've used text mesh pro a bit at work, but have always put off buying it for my personal projects. Guess that's not such a problem anymore :p
     
  23. MV10

    MV10

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    This is huge! TMP and Rewired were my only two must-have assets.

    I don't regret paying full price... Stephan's amazing responsiveness on his own forum was well worth the cost.
     
    passerbycmc, Kiwasi, Ryiah and 3 others like this.
  24. Stephan_B

    Stephan_B

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    When working on this integration, I will most certainly keep in mind existing users and workflows to try to maximize compatibility / portability. At the same time, I also want to fully leverage the potential benefits of the integration to make the resulting product even more powerful and flexible. This might require some compromises in terms of compatibility where the upsides are clear. There is always the potential of looking into some scripts to handle the transition but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
     
  25. Player7

    Player7

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    ok cool, anyway I noticed b11 was being used in the livestream so not long then right :)

    And will the integration be replacing the existing ugui text component? So UnityEngine.UI.Text can be used and not TMPro.TextMeshProUGUI ?

    Going by your previous benchmarks doesn't seem to be a lot of reasons to still have the original text component if this is better in all ways?
     
  26. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Only if you don't need access to the source. Unity's free version doesn't include it.
     
  27. SarfaraazAlladin

    SarfaraazAlladin

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    I do loves me some source code...
     
  28. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    Very awesome! Definitely a best in class asset, nice to see.
     
  29. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    I'm curious, when it becomes integrated, will it be part of UI? The source for UI is available. Will it be in there as well?
     
  30. longroadhwy

    longroadhwy

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    Agreed. Definitely worth paying full price.
     
  31. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Do you remember the approach taken with the UI? How they hired on the NGUI developer and had him assist with the implementation of their own solution? I'm expecting them to take the same approach with TMP. Just a guess though.
     
    zombiegorilla likes this.
  32. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    TMP to be fully integrated into Unity sometime around version 2020 then? :p
     
    rakkarage, MV10, Kiwasi and 2 others like this.
  33. elbows

    elbows

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    I dont think they hired the NGUI guy until after the main period of delays and aborted rewrites of the UI system was over. Once he was onboard it didnt take that long to get the new UI.

    I know it was a joke anyway but I couldnt help writing this message.
     
  34. Not_Sure

    Not_Sure

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    Oh, I tease. It was money well spent.
     
    MV10 likes this.
  35. Yukichu

    Yukichu

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    This is excellent news. I don't even care that I purchased it already, it was well worth it. Text was a real weak point of Unity UI, making 2048 point font at .0001 scale was not a real solution (yes I am exaggerating a little...) Awesome news and congrats!!
     
  36. Kronnect

    Kronnect

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    This acquisition is great news. First and most important Stephan's first class support joins Unity which is awesome. TMP is a wonderful product.

    Kudos to whoever took this decision inside Unity!
     
  37. bluescrn

    bluescrn

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    Urgh, that's disappointing, could turn this from great news to not-so-great news...

    While TMP is generally awesome, I found that it took a bit of modification/extension, at least once you start dealing with swapping fonts at runtime for localisation purposes, and need to handle N materials per font. That was a while ago, so maybe there's better solutions to that specific issue now, but just an example of where having source lets you solve your own problems, rather than moaning on the forums and hoping for fixes/improvements 6 months down the road...

    I'd hope it'd become part of the open-source UI stuff, though. Although I've never actually tried rebuilding that myself (is it practical/straightforward?), I've just used it occasionally for reference
     
    Peter77 likes this.
  38. Not_Sure

    Not_Sure

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    Any chance Unity will be doing this some more?

    Maybe with a decent terrain editor, a terrain stitching tool, erosion brush, or asset cleaner?
     
  39. hopeful

    hopeful

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    Or dynamic GI? Screen space shadows? Or volumetric lighting? ;)
     
  40. QFSW

    QFSW

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    This is awesome news! My UI text is all pretty simple though so I might not end up using it for a while.

    actually, second thought. How is the performance of changing the text in a Textmeshpro text component compared to a normal Unity one? Since I produce the most garbage and the biggest performance impact on CPU bound systems from changing the score in the HUD every frame
     
  41. MV10

    MV10

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    They did this with TMP, collaborated with the NGUI author, and bought that camera-rig company (Timeline, etc), so it looks like the answer is probably good news for us on the "buy vs build" front.
     
  42. Dave-Carlile

    Dave-Carlile

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    I believe they resolved this. You can add any number of fallback fonts, and any characters not found in the main font will fall through to the next font, then the next. I'm using this feature for localization and it solves the problem nicely.
     
  43. Moonjump

    Moonjump

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    Does the score change every frame? I remember getting a performance boost from only updating the score when it actually changed (back in the Unity 2 days, I assume the same will hold true today).
     
  44. QFSW

    QFSW

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    Yeah it does
     
  45. Player7

    Player7

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    yeah its not so great.. (https://bitbucket.org/Unity-Technologies/ui) I mean if it didn't exist you wouldn't have further improvements to parts of it such as ui-extensions (https://bitbucket.org/UnityUIExtensions/unity-ui-extensions/) which I use, because unity have largely not bothered doing anything to improve any part of ugui since it came out. Now that TMP has become a baseline feature of unity, maybe some people will have more improvements built on top of it that could be released or go on the asset store to further improve the feature, clearly not going to happen if remains closed source.. I mean that is the whole problem with assets that come along to improve rubbish areas of unity, they often still leave areas where some people can further enhance them, but if the feature isn't baseline for everyone, then the market in which to offer their own improvement built ontop of another asset becomes so small that your potential audience to sell too requires them to all have purchased that asset aswel.

    I guess we will see, I'm sure some parts of TMP could be redone within unity on the c++ side, while parts that remain c# can go on the open source page on bitbucket as per the rest of the ugui stuff. If not well kinda dumb, I mean might sound like an advantage to have source for those who bought the asset, but in bigger picture not so much at all, infact probably opposite. For those who bought the asset in the last month or so Unity should just offer refund or equivalent discount on another asset.

    I've never bothered rebuilding the whole thing (infact would probably be pointless as its 5.5 still), only used parts of it for some custom mods. Just recently improved the content size fitter, so that it smoothly downsizes if the previous size was larger, and only instantly resizes up if preferred size is bigger than before. Small S*** you know that if you put a suggestion on this forum or on that blackhole known as feedback tracker, for such an improvement it would sit for years and never be done anyway. So for things like that having source lets people just do it themselves.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2017
    rakkarage likes this.
  46. Doddler

    Doddler

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    I'm hoping that the integration will mean some development towards runtime font generation. Adding fonts or glyphs at runtime is actually just impossible, which is an issue for some kinds of games. It's really my only issue with text mesh pro at the moment.
     
    hopeful likes this.
  47. tsangwailam

    tsangwailam

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    Just want to know. Did Unity hire the developer for futher development? Or just acquired TMP software from developer?
     
  48. hopeful

    hopeful

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    He's hired.
     
  49. Stephan_B

    Stephan_B

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    This was like an Asset Bundle. I was included in the package :)
     
  50. Stephan_B

    Stephan_B

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    Updated release of TextMesh Pro has been submitted to the Asset Store to address a critical issue which affects the functionality of the product in the editor.

    All users of the free version of TextMesh Pro should update to this new release as soon as it goes live on the Asset Store.

    As to the specifics of the issue, I simply messed up and forgot to add the define "UNITY_EDITOR" when creating the dlls which make for unhappy text and behaviors in the editor.