TextMesh Pro - Advanced Text Rendering for Unity - Beta now available in Asset Store

TextMesh Pro includes several functions that were added to the Material Context Menu which among other things enable copying and pasting font atlas from material to material.

The various new functions that I added to the Material Context menu are explained in this video which also covers important tips about Font Asset Creation, Material Presets and the Context Menu functions.

 

I am almost there. A few more things needed to get the Multi Font & Material released which I need to get out first since it does affect the Text Input component. Most of the backend needed to implement the Text Input component is already done and in the product so I don't expect it will take much longer after the Multi Font & Material is released.

 

Yes. The geometry can be accessed via the Mesh class as well as the TextMeshPro.textInfo.meshInfo[] array.

The TextMeshPro.textInfo class contains several sub structure arrays which contain information about every character, word, line, link and the mesh.

Here is an example where the geometry is being modified by another script. This example is available on the TextMesh Pro user forum.

 

Take a look at the following thread from the TextMesh Pro user forum which includes examples of this. The script used to create these FX is available to registered members / users of the product.

 

Making sure Multi Font & Sprite support works correctly with Masking & ScrollRect and Unity's Layout components.

 

What version of Unity are you using and what version of TextMesh Pro were you using before that?

As per the upgrade notes for the latest release, did you remove (delete) the previous installation of TextMesh Pro before importing the new package? Please be sure to make a backup of your project before hand.

 

Excellent

 

Here is an image of a text object showing the use of Multiple Fonts & Sprites in a single text object as well as using a Fallback Font to handle missing glyphs from the currently assigned font asset.



Here is an image of the TMP Settings where the list of Fallback Font Assets can be defined.



Adding another Font Asset like FontAwesome to the Fallback list makes it easy to also use icons from it. In this case, the Apple was added by using the UTF-32 support which is in the form of \U00001F79

 

There are different versions of TextMesh Pro available on the Asset Store for the different releases of Unity. Unfortunately, the Asset Store doesn't show what version is available for what release. It always shows the latest version # of the latest updated release. Basically, you have to read the release notes to know what version you'll be getting based on the version of Unity that you are using.

To complicate matters even more, there is an issue with the Asset Store where it might not even provide the correct version of the Asset based on what version of Unity was used last to download. For instance, if you have multiple versions of Unity and download an Asset using Unity 5.3 and then open Unity 4.7 to download again, you'll be getting the Unity 5.3 release in Unity 4.7. The opposite is also possible.

Having said all of that, the latest release of TextMesh Pro for Unity 4.6 is release 0.1.46 Beta 5.2 which is available on the Asset Store but given how the Asset Store can easily be confused, it might be easier to get that release for the TMP user forum.

In terms of the TMP_FontAsset error, this class was renamed in the latest release for Unity 5.2 but remains named TextMeshProFont in previous releases.

In terms of Unity 4.7, the only change required is adding the UNITY_4_7 to the compiler conditionals (as you pointed out).

I do plan on releasing a new version for Unity 4.6 / 4.7 once the Multi Font & Sprites support is done. At that point, I'll update all releases which is 4.6 / 4.7 - 5.0 / 5.1 and Unity 5.2 +.

 

Thank you

Having to maintain 3 different versions can be challenging so hopefully Unity will keep backwards compatibility breaking changes to a minimal in future releases.

On the other hand, in the latest release for Unity 5.2 & 5.3, I reworked the two TMP components to inherit from a common class which will make the maintenance of these difference releases easier going forward.

 

I presume you are using the latest release which is 0.1.52 Beta 3.1. The release # can be found in the header of the TextMeshPro.cs file.

In order for the text to render correctly, scaling has to be uniform on the text object. This means X,Y,Z . Often users forget about Z and leave it at zero which will result in issues.

Next, there is a minor issue which can happen with scaling for which are addressed by the following changes. See this post on the TMP User Forum related to this.

Make sure you register on the TextMeshPro user forum and provide feedback in that thread please.

 

Glad to hear that solved your issue

 

TextMesh Pro does work with Unity 5.1. However, there is a bug with the Unity Asset Store where it may not provide you with the correct version of an asset.

I suggest you register to the TextMesh Pro user forum where all the versions are available. The latest for Unity 5.1 is Release 0.1.5 Beta 2.2.

 

Since this latest release includes pretty significant changes and given the Unity Asset Importer is very primitive where it has no ability to deal with files that are no longer necessary in a package, as per the Release notes, you have to remove the previous installation of TextMesh Pro by deleting the "TextMesh Pro" folder. Be sure to backup your project first and any files you may have saved inside the TextMesh Pro folder hierarchy. Then import the new release.

 

Making sure text Overflow - Ellipsis mode works well with the soon to be released Multi Fonts & Sprites support.



In this example, the text object is using (3) fonts and (1) sprite. As you can see the Ellipsis (...) is correctly inserted regardless of the target being a different font or sprite.

 

Something like this



In this example the text is bend on the z Axis but around an object (sphere) you would choose the Y axis for instance.

Here is a link to a thread on the TextMesh Pro user forum which covers this topic and includes example scripts which you will be able to access once you register.

 

The VertexAttributeModifier.cs script is attached to the text object. This script contains several function to manipulate the text like Jitter, Wave, etc... One of those is the Warp which curves the text based on a Unity Animation Curve which is assigned in the inspector. The example uses an animation curve but this could be based on some equation instead to define the curve itself.

Again, this script simply modifies the vertex attribute like position or color to do different FX.

 

I just approved your registration to the user forum. This will give you access to the latest releases and ability to download those scripts.

Make sure you grab the latest version of that script.

Remember there are two different TextMeshPro components. One for the Mesh renderer which replaces the old text Mesh and the other TextMeshProUGUI which replaces the ui text component.

In terms of the bending / warping of text, the VertexAttributeModifier script was created to show examples of how the mesh and vertex data could be modified to do all kinds of things. It wasn't created just for curves. A more sophisticated implementation based / derived from this script could be created with some ui specifically for curving the text.

I am sure that if a user created one that it would appeal to many users.

I am out for a part of the afternoon but if you run into any issues, post in that thread on the TMP user forum and I'll be sure to check when I get back and give you a hand if needed.

 

You should be able to change the Stencil properties by accessing the material although I guess your changes might get overwritten by the MaterialManager.

I tried to mirror Unity's implementation in terms of the Stencil Masking. I have also revised the implementation for the next release but I am open for suggestion on changes to improve flexibility.

 

Notice - TextMesh Pro user forum is experiencing a cold right now so access is down. Working with the hosting provider to get this back up and running as soon as possible.

Update - This was an issue with the hosting servers which are now back and running.

 

I'll check the implementation again tomorrow and let you know what I find. It shouldn't be too complicated of a change.

 

@TagScott I have been going over the implementation for masking and not certain about how Unity's own masking behaves with their text component as seen below.

The image below shows objects which had two layers of masking (which worked fine) but when you disable the mask on the larger button, you would expect the text to be masked based on the shape of the smaller button but it is not. This seems like a bug to me. Is this how you expect it to behave?


Image showing UI Text with disabled masking on grey button and masking on smaller green button.

Update : I went back to Unity 5.1 and everything is behaving as expected so this appears to be broken in Unity 5.2 / 5.3 and 5.4. It looks like when the mask is disabled on the parent or object, the masking component isn't releasing the mask.

 

I was working on addressing the Stencil Mask read / write when I ran into this issue with Unity's UI.Mask. I should be able to get the read / write issue resolved. Any chance, you can get me a simple repro via email for testing?