How to put text on the scene, like with the old 3d text?

I have a lot of button-like elements on a scene, and on top of each button, there needs to be a number. In the old unity, I would just slap 3d text-objects on top of the buttons, but since 4.6 doesn't seem to have 3d text, what is the best way to do it?

I noticed I could add a canvases on top of the buttons, and insert the text there, but I have hundreds of buttons on screen, and on first thought it feels bad for performance to add 100 or so canvases on the scene.

Is it?

I also noticed that I can add a "Text component" on the button gameobject, but I cant get this to work - I cant see the text anywhere. I cant find any documentation on how to use the ui components on gameobjects, and now I'm not sure what's the best way to do this.

Thanks

 

It hasn't been removed.

--Eric

 

Thanks. That works. Add an empty gameobject and give it a text mesh component.

Eric5h5, I cant find the 3d text anywhere in my 4.6.0f3.

And trying to give gameobjects the 4.6 text component seems to just open a can of bugs..

 

As Stephan B explained. There never was a "3D text object" per se, it was always a GameObject with a 3DText component. That's how absolutely everything in Unity works...components attached to GameObjects. It works exactly the same as before, no bugs that I know of. In pre-4.6 versions of Unity, there was a menu item that created GameObjects with a 3DText component attached, but that just made it a bit more convenient to create; it doesn't change how it works in any way.

--Eric