Pixel-Perfect Dynamic Text - Support Thread

Not sure what the previous version specifically was, but in the files the copyright read "Copyright 2013-2015" so I'm assuming it was a version from 2015.

Neither the Unity version nor the DT version was change close to the problem arising. We are developing for PC, Mac and Linux, and we're doing so on Windows 10, and Windows 8.1 computers. We haven't checked the problem on Mac and Linux in build yet, as we target Windows first.

I'm uncertain whether it happens when changing any psd file, but I think it possibly could be the case, I'll make sure to test that.
The problem happens less often in an actual build I believe, but recently we've seen the error in a build and this is why it's more important to us now finding a solution.

Sadly I'm not allowed to send you the project it happens in as it's a company project, I suspect the issue is hard to replicate as well, so I'll see if I can export some kind of sample where the problem persists. However that is probably gonna be hard as well.

So yeah I'll see what I can do for you in terms of some project files with the issue, and I'll see if any photoshop document can cause the issue.

Edit: Oh and I should probably add, and this is something that is kinda weird and might contradict what I think the problem is, but we get the error consistently when rebuilding the scripts. So when ever a script is changed and unity starts compiling, the error is displayed.

Cheers.

 

@DanielSchmidt Can you verify you are not having a separate inspector window open which is locked to a an instance of Dynamic Text? Script reloading in that case might cause the error.

I wasn't able yet to replicate the issue, although I have weird problems with the exact Unity 5.4.0f3 (custom-selected fonts not even working properly with that Unity version in the example scene).

The script-reloading also seems to trigger OnDisable...OnEnable, and I think I can make a change related to that to see if it might help. But it may take until next week I can return to work on this.

 

@DanielSchmidt I have a test build for you. But for some reason I can't start a private conversation in the forum with you. Can you please send a message to me, or alternatively send email to contact (at) strobotnik dot com.

 

I have thusly started a private conversation.

Can you verify you are not having a separate inspector window open which is locked to a an instance of Dynamic Text? Script reloading in that case might cause the error.​

I don't believe any of us on the team do, but I do have two inspector windows open from time to time, usually I have them both but one not being in focus as seen on the image below. However it's not locked.



We are using custom fonts, with custom materials (i.e. not the default font material, see image below) using custom shaders. This is due to using a blurring or masking system together with dynamic text at times.

 

Hey @tonic and thank you for your hard work and building this asset. Would you provide me a contact (Skype, Facebook, Discord, any) to discuss with you the 3D Mesh renderer issue on call?

 

I prefer handling support over email. Sent you an email address in private conversation, just to be sure. Although the publicly visible support email address (in the asset store page) works just as well.

 

For anybody who's interested, that previous post wasn't about an issue in the Pixel-Perfect Dynamic Text, but instead about discussion about the overall difference in GUIText / 3D Text Mesh (originating in stackoverflow, I've added new comments there). Which is the exact reason why this asset exists.

 

Version 1.2.3 released.
It has minor fixes to support Unity 2018.3 and 2019.1 without warnings.

 

Pixel-Perfect Dynamic Text version 1.2.4 has been released:

For Unity 2019.3+:
• Support for Enter Play Mode without Domain/Scene Reload.
• Removed GUILayer components to fix a warning.

 

Pixel-Perfect Dynamic Text is 50% discounted during the Cyber Week Mega Sale!

 

I have a collection of 3d objects in a scene, each with an attached canvas and text component - like a label for each item.

I figure having dozens of canvas objects is probably inefficient, but I couldn't get decent-looking 3d text with the built-in textmesh or with TextMeshPro without a canvas for each.

The interesting thing is I only need 2 sizes for the text - "near" and "far." So in every frame, I have to recalculate the scaling so the text is the same size regardless of the distance to the object.

My question is, would PPDT help with these goals (and if so, how?) or should I stick to multiple canvases?

Many thanks

 

Hi @amateurd thanks for the question.
That sounds like a typical case which is close to the niche PPDT still is good for, when comparing to other more common solutions.
I'm not 100% sure about the "only two sizes" usage though. If the object distance varies between frames, then I guess you'd still need similar per-frame logic for each frame, which would either adjust size or the actual the text position so that it'd maintain the same distance to camera.
I suggest you visit this page https://strobotnik.com/unity/dynamictext/ and download the "Lorem Ipsum" demo version. It will always forcibly show lorem ipsum text instead of the text you're trying to show, but you can otherwise test if the asset feels like a good fit.

 

Many thanks, I did try the demo. It did indeed display better than the regular text, and better than TextMeshPro. I'd like to apply effects (like an outline), however, which I couldn't find a good way to do it with this. I do appreciate the advice, and may come back to this when I have more time.

 

In theory you replace the default text shader with own custom shader to apply some fx.

However, it'd be still hard to make proper outlines that way. That would require expansion of the bounding rectangles of glyphs, which is not a supported feature of PPDT. It would not be an easy addition either, because PPDT uses the Unity's built-in dynamic font atlasing (same atlas that's used by the regular text mesh), and there's no guarantee of having any extra spacing there.

If you can spare some fillrate, a classic and simple trick for creating thin outlines is to create 4 extra duplicates of the text which have the outliner color. Move those with small x,y offset in each diagonal direction, and also setup the draw or z order so that they're 'behind' the actual text. I guess that's about the only reasonable way for making outlines with PPDT.

 

Pixel-Perfect Dynamic Text v1.2.5 has been released!

• Fixed warning for Unity 2023+.
  
• Verified support for Unity 6.