UI Text Effects (for standard Unity UI Text)

We are happy to announce that we've just released a package with various Unity UI (uGUI) Text Effects.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/52508



There are 12 extremely valuable effects:
- Better Outline: a more continuous outline than the standard one.
- Gradient Color: global/local, vertical/horizontal, override/additive/multiply.
- Depth Effect: add thickness to text.
- Soft Shadow: blurry shadow.
- Outer Bevel: add outer lit and shaded edges.
- Skew Effect: add horizontal+vertical transformations and perspective.
- Curve Effect: bend or distort text vertically.
- Character Spacing: increase or decrease the distance between individual characters.
- Limit Visible Characters: hide characters, make a typewriter.
- Overlay Texture: add an image overlay, local/global, override/additive/multiply.
- Inner Bevel: add lit and shaded edges inside the characters, override/additive/multiply (only "override" on SM2 level GPUs).
- Inner Outline: add outline inside the characters, override/additive/multiply.









With this package, you can finally echo effects from Photoshop or Word, while still using the standard Unity UI Text.

Suggestions for new effects are very welcome. The newly made effects will be added to the package.

 

This looks fantastic. Can you verify that it is compatible with Unity 5.3.2?

 

Hi gpence,

Thanks for the kind words! And yes, it definitely supports Unity 5.3.2

 

This looks very good but how about performance in mobile? It's faster than the unity default shadow and outline effects?

 

Hi joelbelo,

Some of the effects (e. g. gradient, skew, inner outline, etc.) are faster, but some aren't. They're basically made in the same way as the standard Unity effects, so if you're having issues with the standard ones, you'll probably have them with ours, too On the other hand, if you're not overusing them, they will work perfectly fine on mobile platforms!

 

Hi!

After the several Unity crashes I started the profiler and found the huge memory/material leak in following components:
- InnerBevel
- InnerOutline
- OverlayTexture

Run your demo scene with Unity Profiler and you will see the increasing "Materials" count every frame! Please, fix it asap...

I am using Unity v5.3.3f1

 

Hi!

And the feature request: as far as I can see the image transparency is not supported in the "OverlayTexture". Can you make the support for image transparency?

I'd like to have the transparent or semi-transparent letters with the bevels. If I try to apply color transparency, the bevels become transparent also. Can you make the effect with the transparent letter backround but with non transparent bevels?

 

Hi dis-s,

Thanks a lot for detecting this issue and pinpointing the three effects! I think I know where the issue lies - unexpected Unity behavior (due to a bug or misleading documentation), but we will definitely look for a solution for this.

Regarding the feature request: are you talking about Inner Bevel? Or Outer Bevel?

 

Both. See, what I mean:

 

One more example:

 

Hi everyone,

An update is finally on the Asset Store: http://u3d.as/n57

- The mentioned material leak for Fancy Effects has been fixed.
- For global effects (and effects that can be applied in local or global space), in addition to applying them within the text area, there is now a possibility to apply them in full rect space.

 

Hi,

So I stumbled across your plugin for a substitute of the built-in Outline UI effects. The result looks very promising from the images. I wonder if the "Better Outline" offered in your plugin has controls over the thickness and the color with alpha of the outline since there is no demo offered and I could not tell from the images.

I also wonder the performance of the plugin comparing with the built-in effects. Currently my scene uses a lot of text components and using the built-in Outline is too much for a device like iPad 4.

Thank you!

 

Hello Neonlyte,

Some of our effects, including the Better Outline, work very similarly to the standard Unity effects. So, unfortunately, if you're having trouble with performance with the standard one, ours will not be better in this case. We have been looking into how to improve that, but haven't had the chance to implement it yet.

 

I'm disappointed with typewriter effect (only reason purchased it)

It isn't exposed the delay per character, and it keeps looping (back to off and starting again) , which is not how any typewriter effect should work. . As a non-programmer, it is not useful to me

 

Hi sticklezz,

Sorry for the misunderstanding! In the list of all available effects, a typewriter effect isn't listed - there is only the "Limit Visible Characters" effect, which can be used to make a typewriter with just a couple lines of code. I thought this was clear, but I'll have in mind that it isn't. On the other hand, there is a sample typewriter script within the samples of this package, so I can probably make the changes that you need and possibly include them in future releases. Since we also received an e-mail from you, let's continue there.

 

Thanks for helping me!!!!

The tool is great that it doesn't add a new text field type like so many other text effects, I can use this with standard text fields

 

Glad I could help!

 

Does it work for any font ugui can render? I'm assuming you can use it like ugui effect components(like outline and shadow components), am I right?

 

Hi noanoa,

You are absolutely right, our effects are using the same base for the effects as the default Unity effects. Although, three effects (Overlay Texture, Inner Bevel and Inner Outline) use a special shader, but unless you're using special text shaders of your own, it shouldn't cause any inconveniences.

 

Thanks! I've been looking for an asset like this.

 

Does the outline feature support text transparency?

 

Hi doraya,

The outline surely supports transparency, although when it's semi-transparent, the text itself adopts the tint of the outline a little.

 

hi,

does this plugin support Chinese or other Asia font?
can you give a demo screenshot with using the Chinese font?
thanks!

 

Hi firestoke,

Our plugin supports any font or text that Unity UI supports If you can use your font with the standard Unity UI Text, you'll be able to apply our effects. I don't have a Chinese font right now, but I've attached a little sample with Japanese symbols.

 

Hi DominoOne, this asset looks great, but I have a question, another time I tried to use someone elses outline and it made my app look very lagged, because I use it on forms that are created on a scene and sometimes there are a whole bunch of them, the effect that made me more interested is the Depth Effect, can you assure that this effect won´t make my App lagged??

 

Hi LUCASROSCOE,

Unfortunately, I cannot guarantee that your app won't lag, because I simply don't know what it does or how optimized it already is The Depth Effect works in a similar manner as the default Unity UI Outline effect, so if that one doesn't lag for you, this one shouldn't either.

Hope that helps!

 

Hi, loving the asset so far, very clean.

I was wondering if there was any easy way to adjust the "quality" of the effects. I'll be using the soft shadow of somewhat large text and for anything larger than a few pixels the current quality doesn't cut it.

Can this be adjusted somehow?

 

Hi @Light_Bringer777,

Thanks for using the plugin and for the positive feedback! Speaking about the quality of the soft shadow, there is no reasonable way to improve it, because Unity UI Texts are designed in the way that adding more "quality" to effects like this will strongly impact the performance. We've optimized the effects, so that they look good enough in a lot of situations, but are still usable. So, as long as the soft shadow uses a low value for blur, it will look good (even on large texts). But having a larger spread is, unfortunately, not an option

 

Hello!

Is anyone can help me with Inner Bevel effect?
I created the object, I added "Text" component, assign Fancy-text material on them and added "Inner Bevel" component.

But I can't see bevel effect. Why? What did I miss? Thanks!

 

Hi @AndreyMesheryakov,

Is it possible that the bevel X and Y values are too small (or too big)? Can you try playing around with the values?

 

Hello!

Changes to bevel X and Y values do not change anything for me.
Can you, please, make test scene with Inner Bevel effect for me?

Have a nice day.

 

Hi @AndreyMesheryakov,

There is a test scene included in the package It has all of the effects applied to different text fields. Let me know if you figure out the issue. Otherwise, it would be great to get a test project that shows the effect, which doesn't work.

 

Hi, this might not be a question about your asset but, I was trying to make use text effect shader and bought your code to see how you achieve them.
I'm trying to make pass some values from BaseMeshEffect to my text shader.
It seems that the UIVertex's uv1, uv2, tangent and normal doesn't even work, the value of them I get in shader is always const, they don't seem any related to the values I set in ModifyMesh function. However UIVertex's color does work..
But I see that you use uv1 in InnerOutline.cs

Code (CSharp):

1. int count = verts.Count;
2.         UIVertex uiVertex;
3.  
4.         for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
5.         {
6.             uiVertex = verts[i];
7.  
8.             if (uiVertex.uv1 == Vector2.zero)
9.             {
10.                 uiVertex.uv1 = new Vector2(1, 1);
11.             }
12.  
13.             verts[i] = uiVertex;
14.         }

They do make difference if I delete the uv1code above. But when I write my code they just don't work at all. So did you have any trouble using uv1, uv2 like I do? Or maybe I missed something to make them functional?

 

Hi! In newer Unity versions you need to enable the parameters that you want to use in these effects. Try selecting the Canvas and then finding the Additional Shader Channels – then select the channels you want to use. Let me know if that helps

 

Thanks dude, that works!!!

 

That's great!

 

Hi,

Does this plugin support WebGL platform?

 

Yep! There's no reason for it to not support it

 

Thanks! I bought this plugin last week.

 

Will this be compatible with Unity 2018? Thanks

 

Hi. Yes, it is!

 

Thank you!

 

Does this work with TextMesh?

 

No, sorry, this is only for the Canvas Texts.

 

Hello,

We just updated one of our projects using this pluging to Unity 2019.3.a11 and it seems all texts which have an attached SoftShadow script are throwing errors, with the following output:

Code (CSharp):

1. ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
2. Parameter name: index
3. System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentOutOfRangeException (System.ExceptionArgument argument, System.ExceptionResource resource) (at <ad04dee02e7e4a85a1299c7ee81c79f6>:0)
4. System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentOutOfRangeException () (at <ad04dee02e7e4a85a1299c7ee81c79f6>:0)
5. System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T].get_Item (System.Int32 index) (at <ad04dee02e7e4a85a1299c7ee81c79f6>:0)
6. UnityEngine.UI.Shadow.ApplyShadowZeroAlloc (System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] verts, UnityEngine.Color32 color, System.Int32 start, System.Int32 end, System.Single x, System.Single y) (at C:/Program Files/Unity/Hub/Editor/2019.3.0a11/Editor/Data/Resources/PackageManager/BuiltInPackages/com.unity.ugui/Runtime/UI/Core/VertexModifiers/Shadow.cs:100)
7. SoftShadow.ModifyMesh (UnityEngine.UI.VertexHelper vh) (at Assets/ThirdParty/ToJ Assets/UI Text Effects/SoftShadow.cs:95)
8. UnityEngine.UI.Graphic.DoMeshGeneration () (at C:/Program Files/Unity/Hub/Editor/2019.3.0a11/Editor/Data/Resources/PackageManager/BuiltInPackages/com.unity.ugui/Runtime/UI/Core/Graphic.cs:629)
9. UnityEngine.UI.Graphic.UpdateGeometry () (at C:/Program Files/Unity/Hub/Editor/2019.3.0a11/Editor/Data/Resources/PackageManager/BuiltInPackages/com.unity.ugui/Runtime/UI/Core/Graphic.cs:614)
10. UnityEngine.UI.Text.UpdateGeometry () (at C:/Program Files/Unity/Hub/Editor/2019.3.0a11/Editor/Data/Resources/PackageManager/BuiltInPackages/com.unity.ugui/Runtime/UI/Core/Text.cs:569)
11. UnityEngine.UI.Graphic.Rebuild (UnityEngine.UI.CanvasUpdate update) (at C:/Program Files/Unity/Hub/Editor/2019.3.0a11/Editor/Data/Resources/PackageManager/BuiltInPackages/com.unity.ugui/Runtime/UI/Core/Graphic.cs:572)
12. UnityEngine.UI.CanvasUpdateRegistry.PerformUpdate () (at C:/Program Files/Unity/Hub/Editor/2019.3.0a11/Editor/Data/Resources/PackageManager/BuiltInPackages/com.unity.ugui/Runtime/UI/Core/CanvasUpdateRegistry.cs:210)
13. UnityEngine.UI.ScrollRect:LateUpdate()

Any chance this could be looked into?

Thanks!

 

Please update us which of the latest Unity versions the plugin supports?

Ok, UPDATE: it works on 2018.4.4f1

 

Hi there, @DominoOne

Your pack looks awesome.

My team's use case is to reduce manual calibration when we localize our texts. That involves the usage of different fonts (and maybe sizes too). My team would like it very much if the curvature of the text stays the same even when the Font Asset and the Size are changed.

Is this use case possible with your pack? I apologize for imposing on you, but if the answer is yes, may we have a demo video of it for confirmation before I suggest we buy the pack?

 

Hi @DominoOne

Will this be compatible with Unity 2019 or newer?

I had the same Bug as Tom @turdann

Believe me, many Asians are using this plugin...

 

Having the same issue with SoftShadow.cs
Any chance for an update to some modern Unity version?

As a quick walkaround you may try to modify SoftShadow.cs like this:

line 93:
var start = Mathf.Clamp(neededVertsRangeStart, 0, end);
ApplyShadowZeroAlloc(m_Verts, effectColorEdited, start, end, effectDistance.x, effectDistance.y);

line 116:
count = Mathf.Clamp(count, 0, count);
List<UIVertex> rangeToBeMoved = m_Verts.GetRange(0, count);

 

Hi, Can I apply this for Text mesh pro GUI?