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

Hey Rocki, I'm working on a new demo for the current version of TextFx at the moment, so hopefully will have something ready soon. Is there anything in particular you're interested in doing, but don't quite know how?
Cheers

 

TextFx v3.2.5 Released
+ UGUI Mesh Effects added to the TextFxUGUI components; now you can add drop shadows and outlines from the inspector!
+ Playmaker TextFx v3.0+ actions package added. Located in the 3rd Party Asset Support folder.

Download this update via the in-editor TextFx updater (Tools -> TextFx -> Update To Latest). Note: you might need to restart your Unity Editor to see the update.

Enjoy!

 

Hello,

We just bought this asset, and I must say it promises some good time with these nice animations!

I barely started trying it out, but I have one concern already:
I keep getting randomly this NullReferenceException

The keyword here is "randomly": it appears to happen from times to times, without anything changing in the setup.
Context it pretty simple:
It's used for a dialogue cue display.
I created a simple animation using the Quick Setup, containing only an intro and a main (infinite loop).
Here is the flow once my dialogue is started:

• Via code, I SetText() with the content of the current dialogue cue.
• Just after, I ResetAnimation() (if I don't, my new text is briefly displayed onscreen before the anim starts)
• Now, I PlayAnimation();
• As my anim is looping, I stop it when the user clicks, via ResetAnimation() (there is no outro).
• Now I go back to 1st step with my next dialogue cue.

When I say my setup is the same, I mean that my dialogue is small (only has 3 different cues), always played in the same order; At runtime, I just keep playing the dialogue and start it over, it can work several times in a row, but at some point it breaks like that.
I may be doing something wrong, but then I'd like to know what so I can avoid that

Thanks a lot.


[EDIT] Seeing the post after mine recalls me I should mention I'm also on the latest 3.2.5

 

I updated to 3.2.5 and it caused some weird issues (turned "scan" to "can" when updating the text at runtime, the text doesn't have any animations on it, seemed to have something to do with the new drop shadows since when I would type text in the text box, some of the letters would half show up -- possibly some weird text alignment issues too).

Is there a way to revert back to 3.2.4? I updated from Asset Store but that put me at 3.2.1

 

Congratulations to TextFx, it's a great asset!

After creating the first animations I have one question: How does multiple animations work?? TextFxEditor has the option to add animations (Anim1, Anim2, etc), but how do multiple animations work together?! It seems only the first animation (Anim1) is used by TextFx, 2nd or 3rd animation are ignored!?
A simple example: Anim 1 is a typewrite animation, Anim2 should be a TextScale (from 1 to 5); both should take place at the same time, the text should typewrite while the whole text is scaling up slowly. Is this possible? How to combine multiple animations??

 

TextFX appears to currently not work in Unity 5.3. Will there be an update to fix this? When I go to 'Tools/TextFX/Update To Latest' - it is grayed out, so I am only able to update to v3.2.1 which is for Unity 5.1.

 

Hey Fenderrio,

I'm having another issue now with a more recent version, I think there might be an issue in the way TextFxUGUI interacts with Unity's Layout components. For some reason under certain circumstances when changing the text an animation that isn't set on the object is played, inconsistently across the new text with a varying effect depending on the difference in length.

It's hard to describe so I've uploaded an example project here that can reproduce the problem immediately. Just open the only scene in the project and press space to start showing text.

You should see an animation of some of the letters flying from the centre, which is not the defined animation. The other letters which just scale up are behaving correctly

 

Thanks for the test project! I've downloaded it now though, so would you be able to disable the link, as it features the full TextFx package... cheers
Ok, what version of Unity are you using? I just tried it out real quick in Unity 5.3.2 and don't see what you describe; instead I see the text blinking in, letter-by-letter, left to right, two passages of text and then it fades out, nothing flying in from the center.

 

Ok that link should be disabled now, sorry for not thinking of that aspect of putting up the project!

We're using Unity 5.2.2f1, and unfortunately upgrading would be pretty risky at this point as it's close to the end of the project.

Thanks for responding so quickly

 

Don't worry about it
Ok, I've also just tried this in Unity 5.2.2f1 (I have a lot of Unity versions installed...) and it's the same functionality. I've made a WebGL build here for you to check if it looks right or not. What's your target platform? Can you recreate it in the editor? Windows or Mac?
I'm not going to be able to look much more into it tonight (i'm on UK time), but I'll have another look into it tomorrow.

 

Yeah that looks fine, I'm also baffled now as I can't reproduce the problem in that project either. Even though I specifically tested it (just in editor) before zipping it up to send to you!

That was the simpler way of showing that problem, but it also occurs in our game when the text object persists across scenes. So if you could make a simple empty scene and an object to transition to it before triggering the text display that may show the issue.

 

I've been trying out various test scenarios trying to recreate this issue, but had no luck so far. I've been instantiating prefab text effect instances, persisting the effect object in the scene while loading in other scenes, changing the text again, playing, loading in another scene, etc, and all good.
Is it still playing up in your main game project? Any chance of getting a screen grab video showing the problem? Or if you're able to reproduce in the test scene again, could you make a web build of it for me to see? I'm assuming this problem occurs in your game builds and not just the editor?
Cheers

 

@fenderrio Is it possible to get a team license for TextFx? I love the product but noticed that being an editor extension it does not get the default "site license" from asset store products. If possible it would be great to get a team or per product license for it. Otherwise we may have to abandon it due to adding and removing of team members through development.

Thank you in advance, hope to hear back soon.

 

Hi Andy,
Tbh, I'm not sure how I'd go about giving you a team license; as a publisher through the assetstore it gives no options to set or create a team license.
I personally only care that teams have purchased one license per developer working with TextFx... Is that enough reassurance, or do you have a legal team that need to see a proper license to cover yourselves?

 

Awesome thanks for the info. I'll check with them if anything more is needed.

 

Hi again @fenderrio,

Sorry I went away to San Francisco for a week! I've managed to recreate the problem in a web build here for you to see it in action. You have to press any key once for it to instantiate the canvas as a persisting prefab and load into a new scene, then press space to trigger the text.

I've also captured it in a video here in case there are any issues with the web build. Note the animations in this TextFx object is identical to in the project I sent you before, the only difference now is the prefab persistence and scene switch.

If you want me to send you the project again, let me know (I'll strip out TextFx this time ^_^;; )

thanks

Lawrence

 

Ah, excellent! I can see the issue happening in that webplayer build. I'll take another look at reproducing it tonight armed with this new info, and I'll get back to you when I have something.
Cheers,
Tom

 

Hi @LawrenceBishop,

I've managed to recreate the issue in a project here, and although I won't have time tonight to look into the exact reason this is happening in this particular situation, I did come up with a quick and easy temporary fix you can use...

If you call to PlayAnimation with a tiny delay, essentially causing it to play in the next update frame, this fixes it. Eg:
textFx.AnimationManager.PlayAnimation( delay: 0.00001f);

Also you won't need to call to ResetAnimation just before playing the animation, as PlayAnimation automatically plays it from the start by default

I'm going to continue looking at this issue, and put a fix in for it in the next update.
Thanks for your help in discovering this! It's so hard to test for all the edge cases!
Let me know if you need any help with anything else.
Cheers,
Tom

 

Thanks for the quick fix @fenderrio, that's great!

I'm glad I can help find weird edge cases for you

 

For anyone downloading the latest version of TextFx from the Assetstore (v3.2.7), and having an issue playing the new Demo scene in the editor, this is due to a mistaken bit of debug code that was left in that DemoManager class.

To make the Demo run properly in Unity 5.3+, please change line 14 in TextFxDemoManager.cs to:

#if !UNITY_4_6 && !UNITY_4_7 && !UNITY_5_0 && !UNITY_5_1​

And re-open the Demo scene. Should work fine after that!

Apologies for any confusion with this! The amend will be included in the next update.
Cheers.

 

IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range.
TextFxDemoManager.Start () (at Assets/TextFx/Demo/Scripts/TextFxDemoManager.cs:78)

 

I'm assuming you see this after applying the above fix? Sounds like you need to reopen the Demo scene, so that it can load the serialised data it needs in the DemoManager. Hope that helps.
Cheers

 

I made the amends and closed scene and reopened and still get out of range error. Closed and re-opened Unity, still get same out of range error?

Fails on line m_animSectionDropdowns[idx].options = dropdownOptions; in this block:

for(int idx=0; idx < 3; idx++)
{
//Populatedropdown values
dropdownOptions = new List<Dropdown.OptionData>();
foreach (string animName in configAnimNames[idx])
dropdownOptions.Add(new Dropdown.OptionData(animName));
m_animSectionDropdowns[idx].options = dropdownOptions;

TextFxAnimationManager.PRESET_ANIMATION_SECTION animSection = (TextFxAnimationManager.PRESET_ANIMATION_SECTION)idx;

m_animSectionDropdowns [idx].value = animIndex[idx];

//Assigndropdown listeners
m_animSectionDropdowns[idx].onValueChanged.AddListener((int index) => { AnimationSectionSet(animSection, index, true); });

//Setheaderimagestoinactive colours
m_sectionHeaderImages[idx].color = SECTION_INACTIVE_COLOUR;
}

 

Sounds like your DemoScene has lost all its references for some reason (saving the scene in its broken state would have done it). Could you try reverting the DemoScene back to its original state, or reimport just the DemoScene file from the latest TextFx assetstore package?
Cheers

 

TextFx is Amazing !!
Is there an estimate on integration with TextMeshPro coming up.
Cheers

 

+1. TMPro integration would be fantastic.

 

Ask and you shall receive! ... eventually I do listen to you guys, it's just it takes me forever with everything else I've got going on. Hope you enjoy the new update!

 

TextFx 3.2.9 Update
+ Added support for Text Mesh Pro
+ Added support for positioning TextFx text on a curve
+ Optimised animation logic
+ Removed legacy folder content
+ Compatible with latest NGUI version
+ Fixed some other bugs

 

Wow, this is an Incredible update. Support for TextMesh Pro and Curve...
Thank you so much.

 

Hi @fenderrio,
Using TextFX for my new project. Everything worked fine in editor but when i deploy it to android. i get text scrambled issue everywhere. Using Dynamic text for all the lables(NGUI Labels).

You suggested to change font type to non-dynamic which i can't because of the nature of the project. i need to keep updating most of the texts. Strange thing i noticed is when launching the game all fonts will have this issue but if i minimize the app the bring it back to forground all texts get fixed. How can i resolve this. Am i missing anything!

BTW this issue gets fixed when app goes off focus also say when an Ad appears. How can make sure fonts are rendered correctly on first launch itself. Thanks in advance.

 

hmmmm. 4 days. no reply from author. No reply for mails either.

 

Could simply be that he is on vacation.

 

Hmm removing this package from project. no developer support so far. Disappointed.

 

@wheretheidivides Exactly. That's why i am expecting developers support.

 

Mate sounds helpful. I said i wanted to uninstall it because i waited till the release date hoping to get a fix from author. If i just decide not to use this package because of some serious issues and zero response from author, how on earth he will know about the problems users are facing ? Hope you agree on that at least.

 

Hmm... was about to buy the package, but the bad reviews lately led me to this forum... and things don´t look better up here. So last sign of life was the major TexMesh Pro update in june and some update/bugfix in November?
How is the current integragtion in Unity 5.5? Any news about the 24 errors?

Really unsure if this is worth it, since he seemed to deliver a few updates since 3.2.9...

 

Deprecated errors are the easiest to fix. you can do it yourselves, the explanation is all there in the console with the alternate code to use. Its probably 2 or 3 reccurent keywords that causes all this.

That been said, the dev should just fix em... This asset has such potential there is a huge need for this but when you go on the asset store the first review you see on the top are two bad ones and no replies from the dev. He clearly doesnt know how to deal with customer service. If he doesn't have the time, FINE but at least let your customers know and put in place some system were people can upvote issues, then you know what to work on even if you dont have the time to monitor a forum and reply to emails.

And for the love of god put a link to this forum in the asset store's description so the community can help each other.

What scares me the most about this asset is it feels like the dev doesnt care about it. Very sad... it could be right up there beside textmesh in popularity (and price).

 

I'm getting this same error on Unity 5.5 Mac for iOS. Can't compile the compliment.

 

Are people still having problems with this? I'm looking for an extension that does exactly this but I want to make sure it works before I buy...

 

I'm getting this error with TextMeshPro and TextFX .
Do you know what this could be.

Cheers

Assets/TextFx/Editor/TextFxTextMeshPro_Inspector.cs(36,24): error CS0115: `TextFx.TextFxTextMeshPro_Inspector.OnInspectorGUI()' is marked as an override but no suitable method found to override

 

I also have that issue along with another TMP related error which seems related to that - at least in Unity 2017.1, to which I just upgraded.

Without the TMP integration this asset is not worthwhile IMO. I avoided the error for now by commenting out a few files, rendering TextFX useless.

I still liked the asset enough that TextFx remains in my project for a while, hoping for a new release that fixes TMP+TextFx in Unity 2017.1 (or gets removed).

 

how do you uses is with Text mesh pro ? any doc's ? where do i Add Text mesh pro ??

 

Hey, there I'm looking for a simple solution to make basic curved text (without animation) using Text Mesh Pro. Does TextFX will help me to do it? Does it work fine with latest Text Mesh Pro (I'm on Unity 2018.3)?

 

Is this app still supported? I get the following 2 errors with the latest version of textfx and unity. version 3.2.18 (sept 2020). So the game will not work obviously.

Assets\TextFx\Editor\TextFxTextMeshProUGUI_Inspector.cs(42,24): error CS0115: 'TextFxTextMeshProUGUI_Inspector.OnInspectorGUI()': no suitable method found to override

Assets\TextFx\Editor\TextFxTextMeshProUGUI_Inspector.cs(13,49): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'TMP_UiEditorPanel' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

 

the asset was removed from the asset store so I would say no the support has ended