[RELEASED] TextFx - a text animation plugin for Unity available now in the AssetStore

Hotfix update (3.01) submitted for store review this morning, should be live soon! Working on a feature update next, adding curve positioning back in, more quick editor effects and functionality, etc
feedback encouraged!
Cheers

 

Great work Fenderrio! This asset keeps getting better and better

I'm very new to fonts and how to make things look crisp. Do you have any tips on making text look more crisp?

The default text is looking very blurred..

I think this asset would work so well with TextMeshPro.. do you have any plans on working with it? Or do you have your own crisp font renderer planned?

Keep up the great work. Really am very impressed with this asset.

 

Hi TechiTech!
Sorry I'm only just getting back to you, I must've missed this notification!
Glad you're enjoying TextFx!
With blurry text, you may need to increase the size of the font in the Font settings itself (click on the font in your project hierarchy and it's shown in the Inspector). Often I increase the size of the font in the settings, and then scale down in the scene to get the right pixel density for it to look crisp.
Hope that helps!
Also, TextMeshPro is on the list of other plugins to look into I'm currently concentrating on getting the current version polished, but will be looking to expand to other plugins after that!
Cheers!

 

Btw guys, I'm currently working on a fix to handle some Dynamic Font related issues (seen as scrambled text), and just generally improving the way the text update calls are handled, which should hopefully allow the updating of text while an animation is running as well!
In the meantime, if you're seeing scrambled text, it should be because of the Dynamic Font; a quick temporary fix would be to use a non-dynamic font for your TextFx texts.
Hoping to have a fix update submitted within a week though!
Cheers!

 

Hi Fenderrio,

Great job on the plugin, very useful! I've run into what looks like a bug unless I'm missing something:

I have a TextFx object in my scene with a Text Alignment of Lower Left. If the text doesn't wrap onto a second line then it will be mispositioned almost as though it is two lines. Everything is fine when there are multiple lines, also Middle Left and Upper Left alignments work fine. A strange one :/

 

Hi Lawrence!
Which gui implementation are you using? TextFxUGUI? I've tried to recreate your issue, but not had any luck (I don't think! Unless I'm missing something..).

 

I'm using TextFxNative, I had another look and found a solution for the problem.

If the text is only on one line then TextFxNative never sets the m_line_height variable, so I added

if( m_line_height == 0 )
{
//Only one line
m_line_height = total_text_height;
}

at line 957 of TextFxNative.cs and it behaves correctly.

 

Ha! Good spot I'll put this fix into the update.

Aiming to push a fix Wednesday evening, after some more testing.

Fix will include,
- dynamic font garbled text fix
- AnimatePer option fix
- SetText() fixes and functionality improvements

Thanks!

 

Quick question: Does this fully work in Unity 5?

 

Quick Answer: Yes
It integrates with the new Unity UI text components, as well as NGUI and it's own text renderer system.
Hope that helps!

 

Hey guys!
There's a known issue with TextFx's Unity UI integration with the latest Unity Editor 5.2 version. Things have changed under the hood in their UI system and I need to rejig some things to get it working again.

I'll hopefully have this fixed and submitted to the store in a day or two!

Thanks for your patience

 

Hey guys

I've managed to fix the Unity 5.2 issues and am submitting it in an update to the Assetstore.

It'll take up to a week for it to be reviewed by the Store team and put live, so in the meantime I've uploaded a UnityPackage with the patched scripts here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15138320/TextFx/TextFx Unity5.2 Patch.unitypackage

I submitted an update (v3.1) with a few other fixes last weekend before Unity 5.2 was released, which is still yet to be put live by the store team, but the update with these fixes in will be v3.2.

Let me know if you have any other issues!

Cheers!

 

Thanks so much for your proactive fix! Downloading now...

 

Sorry if this is a dumb question...

I haven't played with this asset in a while but I just downloaded the update and it seems like all the demo scenes now require NGUI (they have a runtime error complaining that the UILabel class is missing).

I don't have NGUI but I remember getting the demos to work way back when I first bought the asset.

Is there a config step I need to do to get the demos working without NGUI?

Thanks.

 

I've just applied the asset store update for TextFx 3.2 (on top of the prior update which I downloaded from this page recently). Now, my unity editor is crashing at the end of importing TextFx, every time.

It goes through almost the entire process... re-serializing assets, etc., and then starts going into each scene (in the editor title bar), and when it gets to the one scene in my project that has TextFx assets in it, I get an APPCRASH on Unity.exe (version 5.2.0.38013).

I'm going to revert for now to the prior version (the one in your dropbox). I just wanted to report this in case others are having the same issue.

 

Hi Arcanor!

Thanks for getting in touch. Sorry for the delay getting back to you on here...
Hmm, strange that you're getting an Editor crash, no one else has reported having this issue yet. Have you tried completely removing the previous TextFx root folder, and then importing the new one?

Cheers,
Tom

 

Hey schmosef,
What version of Unity Editor are you running? And are you completely up-to-date with the latest TextFx version from the store? (There was an update quite recently to v3.2).

There's a chance that in one of the Editor specific packages I uploaded I forgot to remove the NGUI related scripts (which will cause errors for people who don't have NGUI present in their project, and are supposed to be manually imported using a UnityPackage). If you manually remove:
TextFx/Editor/MenuOptionsTextFxNGUI.cs
TextFx/Editor/TextFxNGUI_Inspector.cs
TextFx/Scripts/TextFxNGUI.cs
you should get rid of the UILabel errors and be able to use the TextFxNative and TextFxUGUI implementations just fine
Let me know if you have any other problems with it!
Cheers,
Tom

 

I was reluctant to do that, since my scene has several customized instances, as well as scripts which depend on TextFx classes. However, I did as you suggested and thankfully all GUIDs remained intact, so nothing broke.

I don't know why the editor crashed previously when updating, but complete removal and reinstallation of TextFx seems to have worked just fine.

 

Wahey! Glad that sorted it out for you

 

Hi @fenderrio, thanks for responding on this. I just got into Boston for Unite. I'll check your suggestions when I get back to my office at the end of the week.

 

After further testing, I'm still having the same problems, even after I completely remove TextFx from the project. It seems to either be some kind of corruption issue, or a bug in the editor. Anyway, no need to worry about it here I guess.

 

I'm getting a bug with the latest TextFx 3.2. I have a TextFxUGUI field with "play on start" set to false.

In unity 5.1, the text does not display until I run PlayAnimation. This is the desired behavior.

In unity 5.2, the text is displayed in a static state by default.

Is there something I should change? Is this expected?

 

Hi Andy,
That's strange that you're getting that behavior... I'm not seeing that when I download the latest live TextFx package into a blank Unity 5.2 project.
Could you try removing the root TextFx folder and then re-importing the latest version from the store for Unity 5.2?

 

I am having issues similar to Andy. I have the newest TextFX Update (3.2) and I am running Unity 5.1.2 (dont want to upgrade yet). What is happening is when I call AnimationManager.ResetAnimation() it doesn't do anything, the text still stays on the screen instead of reverting to its starting position (usually transparent and away from where its animating to). It only resets itself when I call PlayAnimation() which is already too late because then it appears on the screen before it disappears.

 

Hi! Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'll be taking a good look at this over the weekend, and will post back here with any news/fixes to download.
Cheers!

 

Hi! I've looked into this today, and it looks like a simple case of the mesh not being updated properly after the animation is reset. You can fix the issue in your own project by adding the following line at the end of the ResetAnimation() method in TextFxAnimationManager.cs:

m_animation_interface_reference.UpdateTextFxMesh();
​

This'll be included in an upcoming update. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, and thanks for your patience! Let me know if you need help with anything else.
Cheers!

 

I tracked down the use case of my bug a bit better. The reset animation script change doesn't seem to fix my issue.

Steps:

Make a canvas
Make a panel child of the canvas.
Make a textfx gameobject child of the panel.
Add intro and animation to the textfx. (with play on start set to false)
Disable the panel gameobject ( This is where the bug is caused)
Play the scene.
Enable the panel.
See text is visible.


I assume some sort of object setup is not being run when the gameobject is disabled on start? It used to work in old versions which is weird. Any ideas? Thanks!

 

Hi Andy!
Thanks for giving such clear repro-steps for this; I now know exactly what the issue is, and I'll be finalising a fix for it after work this evening. I'll post back here when I've got something for you Thanks for your patience!

 

Just to keep you updated; I've got a potential fix for your bug Andy, but I'd like to create a few more unit tests around it and other features to ensure that nothing else has mysteriously broken because of it. Should have something for you this evening!
Cheers

 

Awesome, thanks.

 

I'm curious as to why there aren't more preset options for animation, especially for Main animations. There are 12 Intro animations, and 8 Outro animations, but there are only 4 presets for Main animations.

I think Main is the most important one, as they repeat their animations over time, and can add a lot of life to a game UI. But most of the Main presets are very distracting. I am currently only using Shimmer in my games (and with toned-down parameters).

Would it be possible to add a few more subtle Main animation presets in an upcoming update? Maybe something like Spin X, or Blink, but beginning and ending with the text visible?

 

I noticed when using TextFxUGUI, when I choose Animate Per Line... it animates the whole text rather than just the line, is this a bug? Works correctly with letters and words. I am using Intro - Drop Down animation and animating position from right to left.

 

Hi! It was always the plan to continually add new animations over time, but I've definitely let this slip as bug fixes and other improvements have taken up my attention! I will endeavor to add some new quick setup animations as part of the next updates though Keep a look out!
Thanks for your feedback!

 

Hi Aentropy, thanks for posting. This appears to be happening when the line-breaks are due to the text wrapping around the width of the text label as apposed to actual typed 'new-line' return characters. I'll look into adding support for this case, but in the meantime a fix would be to manually add the carriage returns in the text that your TextFxUGUI component is rendering. Thanks again for your feedback!

 

Hi! Thanks for getting in touch. I wanted to reply to you here so that anyone else trying to use the latest patch unity editor releases can get the same help!
The patch releases 5.2.1p1 & 5.2.1p2 have yet more unity-UI rendering code changes, which is breaking the live TextFx version! Luckily I was able to look into this last night and create an updated TextFxUGUI.cs script which complies with the new changes. As these are not official Unity Editor releases, they don't have their own editor-version compilation dependency flag yet, so I've had to create a new pragma define at the top of the script to trigger these latest changes. Basically, if you want this script to work with any previous versions of Unity Editor, you'll need to comment out the:

#define UNITY_5_2_1p2_FIX​

on line 3.
Please find the amended script hosted here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15138320/TextFx/TextFxUGUI 5.2.1patch Version.rar
Replace your existing TextFxUGUI.cs script with the this one, and it should work fine again!
Cheers!

 

Hi! Sorry, it's been a hectic end to the week! Let's go through these issues...
1) That's actually the intended functionality; the alternative (breaking the association with the last effect you were editing when you lose focus from that object in the scene) proved to be more annoying. Plus it means you can play with other scene objects while an anim still plays, which has come in handy before... I can't remember when. It could maybe be made clearer which object the animation editor is currently editing to avoid any confusion.

2) Yes you can. There's an option on every Intro and Main anim called 'Exit Delay'; so if you set the exit delay of the Intro to be 1, then it'll do what you want.

3) Hmm, this could be a bug. Are your effect objects prefabs? This sounds like a case of serialised data changes not setting the object as 'dirty'... I'll look into this one. If you're using prefabs, try applying the changes before playing the game, or breaking the prefab connection.

4) Yeah, that's a compile warning, nothing that affects the functionality, but I agree it's annoying to see in the console. It'll be dealt with in the next update! If it's really bugging you, the fix is pretty simple; just replace that line (205) with this:

window.titleContent = new GUIContent( "TextFx Editor" );​

5) Ok, I managed to recreate this issue, it should be a pretty simple fix. Out of interest though, why do you want to turn off the animation object mid-way through the animation and then make it appear again still playing? You could call to reset and play the animation again just before reactivating the effect object and this would look less buggy? Of if you just want the animation to not be visible for a bit, you could cull the canvas renderer for that object temporarily (m_effect.canvasRenderer.cull = true; )? Like I said though, I'll look at fixing the SetActive(false) issue for the next update

6) The Epic intro is not best suited to orthographic camera setups, as it relies on the letters to "appear" from behind the camera and fly into view, which can't be achieved on the UICanvas setup because there's no depth. If you want to get the full epic effect, you should use a TextFxNative instance (GameObject->TextFx->Text); this is a bespoke text renderer that I created so that TextFx could be used anywhere in the scene (not just as part of the 2d GUI).

Hope that helps! Thanks for your feedback
Cheers

 

Hi!
Please find attached a unitypackage with script change fixes for the issues you listed.
Namely:
- Prefab effect changes not registering (reverting to prefab version at runtime)
- Disabled animation objects looking glitchy when re-enabled.

These fixes will be included in an upcoming update release on the store, but for anyone running into these problems please get this patch update to hold you over for now!

Thanks for you feedback! You've helped improve the asset

I'm working on a new update workflow whereby you'll be able to download the latest package updates directly from within the Unity editor, bypassing the need to use the Assetstore, which also mean I'll be able to push fixes and updates out quicker and more frequently in future! That's the plan.

Cheers

 

If anyone using NGUI effects downloads that patch update, you'll need to add a property to your TextFxNGUI.cs script:

public UnityEngine.Object ObjectInstance { get { return this; } }​

Thanks!

 

My bad; I forgot you were using the latest patch version. I hadn't added in the previous fixes for the TextFxUGUI script.
I've attached another package which will work with the latest Unity Editor 5.2.1 patch releases (5.2.1p1, 5.2.1p2, 5.2.1p3 so far...)
Sorry for the mix up!

 

Ha, yeah that update was perfectly timed to be instantly out of date as soon as it was published live to the store...
Luckily that last TextFx release also included a workflow for updating the plugin from within the Unity editor I've created a new version (3.2.2) which should be available for you to grab right now. You'll need to restart your Unity editor to get it to detect the new version available. You should see a console warning message about the update, or see a message in the TextFx Animation Panel, but you can also just go to Tools -> TextFx -> Update To Latest.
Hope that helps!

 

Brilliant!

 

Excellent work on the new version. Thank you.
Is there instructions on how to use TextMeshPro with TextFX.
Cheers.

 

Hi rocki,
Thanks! I'm glad you like it.
TextMeshPro isn't currently supported by TextFx at the moment; it's on the backlog though, and I'd hope to have support for it added by the end of the year.
Cheers.

 

That would be so uber awesome.

 

Having a bug with 5.2.1p4 and latest textfx (both from play store and the one it self updates to. 3.3 I think.)

Whenever I set the text of a TextFx component, the text is set to visible. Is there any workaround or fix for this? Hopefully that makes sense

 

Hi Andy,
Are you using the UGUI textfx components? TextFx had some issues with the 5.2.1patch editor releases, as they had breaking changes to the UI api which TextFx uses. You should see a warning message in the TextFx Editor panel telling you to edit a script to get it working again. Else, I'd recommend updating to the latest stable editor release 5.2.2.
Hope that helps!
Cheers

 

Wondering if there is a set of Demo Scenes for the new version.
Cheers.

 

I think I found another bug. I tried upgrading to newest v3.2.1 but the bug still exists.

The bug is, if I play a TextFX animation (Fade In, animate, pause/continue, fade out), then after I fade out, I disable the gameobject, then later I am changing the text while it's disabled, I then enable the gameobject again and call ResetAnimation() and PlayAnimation(), what is happening is that instead of playing the animation letter-by-letter, it is playing the whole sentence all at once.

I tried doing Enable gameobject, ResetAnimation(), yield return null, then PlayAnimation() and that fixes the bug, but it shows all the text on the screen for a split second before disappearing and animating on. It seems that whenever you change the text, it will always initially show all the text on screen and you have to call ResetAnimation() to restart it from beginning, but that doesn't work when enabling/disabling gameobject.

Attached are 2 videos showing the bug. Can I get a work around for this bug? Thanks.

 

Hi HypothicEntropy,
Thanks for the very detailed bug report I've been able to recreate it and fix it. I'm just going to do a bit more testing on it and then upload it either this evening or tomorrow morning. So keep an eye out for a new in-editor TextFx update package in the next 24 hours
Thanks for your patience!

 

Hmmm, perhaps there's something strange happening when a custom made UnityPackage is importing over the top of content that came from the Assetstore... I'm going to look into this and see if I can make the process more painless. Glad you found a way around it for the time being though Let me know if you have any other issues!