Dynamic 2D and 3D text solution for Unity

Our team of Virtence is pleased to present you VText. Finally VText is available in the Asset Store. We have spend a lot of time and effort to provide a satisfying extension of Unity, to generate a dynamic 2D and 3D text solution. We hope you like it.
You can find the package here:
VText

See some features of VText, packed in an Android App (Google Play):
VText Android App

Also you can find a video of some features here:

Suggestions and comments are welcome...

Key Features:

• Dynamic creation of 2D and 3D text
• Supports TTF and OTF fonts
• Intuitive user interface
• Size, bevel and depth dynamically adaptable
• Different material slots for these parameters
• Bending of the 3D text
• Text alignment
• Line spacing
• Optimized UV layout for Lightmapping
• Supports Light Probes

VText is an Unity Package which generates dynamic 2D and 3D text, using an intuitive user interface. It supports any TTF or OTF fonts to create the geometry of the 3D texts. The generated 3D texts are dynamic adjustable in size, depth and bevel. Different materials can be used for this parameters.



VText automatically generates an optimal UV layout for the generated text, which is optimized for Light Mapping in Unity. The geometries of the individual letters are optimized for desktop and mobile devices. Also it generates tangents for the text to get the best results when using normal maps.



With VText created 3D text can be deformed by a curve editor in both XY and XZ directions. The user can decide whether the letters align to the curve or not. The orientation of the text can be changed in horizontal and vertical alignment. The line spacing is also dynamically adaptable.




VText supports the following platforms:

• Windows
• Android
• Linux
• Mac

...iOS are coming soon.

 

Hi, are there any plans to make this plugin platform-independent (.NET)? I'd love to use it in a webplayer/webgl project, but as long as it depends on binary blobs that's not an option... I'm guessing the platform-dependent code is mostly font parsing libraries?

 

Hi Woko,

first of all thanks for you questions. And you definitely found the points. Our plan is to provide you with an update next week which includes iOS support. In the meanwhile we are working on a Mono version in the background which will support all platforms without the ... how did you call it? ... binary blobs . And yes most of it is porting the font-libraries to Mono. Please give us some time ... we are already working on it

 

Great news, thanks for the update and for your work I've already bought the plugin and it works quite well... some artifacts in my o's and c's, but nothing serious. If you want to follow up on that I can send you a project.

 

Hi woko,

we would be very interested in your scene and would like to see exactly what is causing the artifacts. We have extensively tested a variety of fonts. What kind of font do you use? If the fonts are defined clean, then VText works perfectly. We are looking forward to your scene. Please send it to support@virtence.com.
Thank you and have fun with VText.

 

dear crydde
this plugin looking good.
My question:
can i assign font from Resources folder.

 

During installation VText will create (if not existing) a StreamingAssets - Fonts Folder.
After that you are able to choose fonts from a file dialog.

If you rename the Folder, you will get an error.

 

Hello Sufyan,
sorry I have overseen your question. The fonts must be installed at StreamingAssets/Fonts. Other wise VText will not find the installed fonts. We must do this te be sure VText is running on Android for example. If you have any other questions, let me know
Thanks Jan

 

Hi Elthari0n,
you can't rename this folder it is essential that all the fonts have to be installed in StreamingAssets/Fonts. OTherwise VText will not find those fonts.
Jan

 

Hello,

we uploaded a new version of VText in the Asset Store. Besides some bug fixing we added some new features and VText is running in iOS perfect.

New Features:

Tesselation Control:
Now you have the option to control the qualtity of the tesselation of VText generated meshes. A lot of our costumers want to have this feature

Circular bending:
Another big wish was the implementation of circular bending. Now you can bend the generated text circular and combine it with curve bendeing. Do whatever you want, create spirlas or ellipsoid texts - all is possible.


Here you can find a small video to see the new features in action:

Please let us know, what is your wish for the next release.
Thanks
Virtence

 

Hello, I'm getting this error in Unity 5.4.0 b21
Dynamic batching: index buffer source is NULL (first IB byte 0 count 0 first vertex 0 offset 2582)
I get several thousand of of these in the demo StartScene and also when I make a new scene with a fresh component.

 

Hi Bob,

VText is generating a lot of submeshes (for every glyph) in an efficient manner. This is the reason behind this error. There is already an unity bug issue pending, so hopefully it will be fixed by Unity in the future.

Since then just deactivate Dynamic Batching in the Player Settings:

Edit -> Project Settings -> Player

Under the Other Settings tab, disable Dynamic Batching.

Cheers
Elthari0n

 

Thanks Elthari0n. Could you possibly link me to the Unity bug in question? And just to be clear, this is solely a bug on the Unity side?

Thanks!
Bob

 

I am using Microsoft YaHei font. Font size is 21MB. Vtext asset is runnig very slow with this font.

 

Hi,
I just bought your latest plugin on assetstore(version 2.01), but after I added it to my game I found vtext produce a lot of GC Alloc and high performance cost in my mobile android device when I use the unity(Unity3D 5.6.1f1) profiler to track the game crash issue.
(In my game, I use the vtext as the floating texts of the hero's attack value above the monsters, and I use the pool system(pool boss) to spawn the vtext prefab and despawn them after finishing the floating animation. The attack value will be changed when the hero is updated even in the battle.)
The below is the despriction.
1. GC Alloc
You can refer to the screenshot1 of the attachments. In the picture, the vtextInterface.update will produce a lot of GC Alloc every shot period. I find there is one method named clearChildren() will destory a lot gameobjects in the UpdateGlyphs(), the clearchildren() will be called when I changed the rendertext property of the vtext, so , I wonder maybe it is the reason which generate a lot GC Alloc? (Now，my game will be killed by android system after running serval minutes, memory warning?)
2. High performance cost
You can refer to the screenshot2, the loading.updatepreloading and the sub methods I found the reason is the call of Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets() in your script named VTextInterface.cs, which is the only one Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets() in my game.

So, I think the vtext is a very useful plugin for me, could you please tell me how to solve it ?

Thanks.