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

[fenderrio]

** Available now on the assetstore for just $30! **

Want to stand out from the crowd?
Turn your boring text into something fun and exciting for your user!

TextFX is a powerful text animation system.

Features:
* Quick Setup editor with 20+ pre-configured intro/main/outro animations

• Powerful & intuitive advance animation editor for creating your own unique effects
• Works natively with new Unity UI text components
• Works with NGUI and Text Mesh Pro
• Position your text on 3D curves
• Includes own bespoke text rendering implementation for non-UI based text animations
• Preview animations in the Editor
• Clean and simple scripting calls
• Optimised for mobile
• Particle and Audio effect integration
• Great documentation and support

Bring your text to life!
TextFx, your all-in-one text solution for Unity!

Assetstore Link
Webplayer Demo

[fenderrio]

[nuverian1]

Looks good

[fenderrio]

New Features:

• Massive drop in price! Now only $20!
• Extended Audio clip and Particle Effects functionality in animation actions. Now can control volume, pitch, duration and more.
• Support extended down to Unity version 3.5.3
• New example effects added, showcasing new Audio and Particle functionality.
• Added OnFinish action for animations.

[Play_Edu]

Hi,

It’s Awesome. Can you tell me it’s work with any font and Ngui.

Best wises,
Play_edu

[fenderrio]

Hi Play_Edu,

You can use any bitmap font with TextFx that you currently use with NGui.

If you’re using Unity 4 or greater, you can use any unity supported font format (ttf, otf, etc) directly or use your Bitmap fonts which NGui uses.
Unity 3.5 only supports the Bitmap fonts.

Hope this answers your question. Thanks for your interest!
Fenderrio

[Play_Edu]

Hi,
Thanks for your answer.
Great work . I’ll buy very soon.

[metaleap]

Great webplayer demo, so many creative possibilities! One question, positioning in 3D space instead of 2D layout is no problem, right? I don’t mean full deep spatial meshes like the “3D Text” and “FlyingText3D” provide, that kind of “90s web design” stuff isn’t really needed… just might wanna pop up your textFX somewhere in-scene (so possibly slightly skewed or rotated depending on viewing angle / distance etc.)

[fenderrio]

Thanks metaleap, I’m glad you like it!
You are right in your assumption that you can position a TextFx animation anywhere in your scene, and look at it from any angle/distance.
Basically, anything you can do with a plain unity TextMesh implementation, you can do with a TextFx animation.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Fenderrio

[tnaseem]

Firstly, great plugin. Having heaps of fun with it

I have a couple of issues though. I wonder if you can shed some light on it…

(1) If I change the size of the (OTF) font in the Import Settings, the data gets all messed up. Goes from this:

to this:

Is there a way of refreshing the settings? I can’t seem to find where to do it.

(2) Probably related - If I change the font in the Effect Manager (Either OTF, or a bitmap font), nothing gets updated. The only way around this appears to be to remove the EffectManager from the GameObject, reapply, and adding the font BEFORE adding any text in the Text Field.

I’m probably missing something really obvious, so any help would be most appreciated!

Cheeers,
Tarique.

EDIT:
Ok, I have a quicker way around it, which involves just cutting and pasting the same text back into the ‘Text’ field. Although the text changes size. A pain, when you have to do this for each one and resize.

Might be an idea to add a ‘refresh’ type button, allowing changes to the font sizes, etc, and resizing depending on the amount the font size was changed. For instance, all I was trying to do was to double the font size to get better resolution on the displayed text. By doing the cut&paste thing, meant all the text elements jumped to double their size in the scene, which I had to then resize back down.

Hope this feedback helps! Unless I’m missing something obvious that’s right in front of my face

[tnaseem]

Also getting these warnings on adding a delay to the sounds in the animation settings (Unity 4.2.1):

Delayed playback via the optional argument of Play is deprecated. Use PlayDelayed instead!
UnityEngine.AudioSource:Play(UInt64)

Call Stack is:
EffectManager:PlayClip(AudioSource, AudioClip, Single, Single, Single, Single) (at Assets/TextFx/Scripts/EffectManager.cs:1437)
EffectManager:PlayAudioClip(AudioClip, Single, Single, Single, Single) (at Assets/TextFx/Scripts/EffectManager.cs:1451)
LetterSetup:AnimateMesh(Single, TextAnchor, Int32, LetterAnimation, AnimatePerOptions, Single, EffectManager) (at Assets/TextFx/Scripts/LetterSetup.cs:455)
EffectManager:UpdateMesh(Boolean, Int32, Single, Single) (at Assets/TextFx/Scripts/EffectManager.cs:1293)
EffectManager:UpdateAnimation(Single) (at Assets/TextFx/Scripts/EffectManager.cs:1082)
TextEffectsManager:UpdateManager() (at Assets/TextFx/Editor/TextEffectsManager.cs:130)
UnityEditor.EditorApplication:Internal_CallUpdateFunctions()

I’ve changed the offending line (1437) in my copy to:

//		a_source.Play((ulong)( delay * 44100));
		a_source.PlayDelayed(delay);

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Tarique.

[tnaseem]

Ok. Another problem.

My score display (screenshot in the message above the last), slides in from the side at the start of the level. All works swimmingly. However, when I try to update the values via script. ie.

hudScore.SetText(score.ToString());

the animation for that ‘hudScore’ EffectManager resets back to the beginning, where it remains. Any idea what to do about this?

Cheers,
Tarique.

EDIT:
Why is it, as soon as I post a message, I find a workaround?

If I force the animation to it’s end state (via SetEndState()) each time I update the text, it appears to work fine.

[fenderrio]

Hi Tarique,

I’m glad you’re enjoying the plugin. Also, thanks for bringing these few issues to my attention.

Your first issue with changing the font settings and then having to reset the text and resize the elements in order to return to how you had it set up before changing it, I hadn’t considered this scenario before! I’ll work on an elegant way of handling this to be included in the next update

Second issue about the warning message; that’s a quick fix on my part, I’ll just need to put a build-dependent if/else to force Unity 4.1 users or greater to use the new PlayDelayed() method call instead. Thanks for letting me know about it!

Your third issue is a problem related to the plugin not currently supporting the editing of text during an animation, so I’ve forced the animations to be reset whenever the text is changed. This should and will be handled more elegantly in the next update, but for now you’ve found a good work around using the SetEndState() function. Hopefully this will suffice for your project until the next plugin update is released…

Thanks again for getting in touch, please let me know if you have any other queries!
Cheers,
Tom

[tnaseem]

Hey Tom,

Thanks for the update! Yep. With those workarounds it’s all working fine. I’ll let you know if anything else crops up. So far, so good though, and loving playing with the animations

Actually, by articulating the problems here, it gives me time to think, which is why I end up adding to the post with a workaround within minutes of posting! Quite therapeutic actually. I should do it more often

Actually, just to clarify the last point - The animation has already completed when I do a SetText() and the EM resets. So, not only during the animation, but when it’s completed. Not sure if this helps, but thought I’d mention just in case.

Cheers,
Tarique.

[fenderrio]

Really glad your enjoying playing around with it Keep an eye out for an update in the next week or so, which should fix these issues.
Cheers,
Tom

[andrydeen]

Hi , your asset is great !, especially criptyc effect , is it a part of asset?

[fenderrio]

Hi,
Thanks very much!
Yes, the “Cryptic” effect in the webplayer demo is included in the package as an example for you to use or customise however you want

[andrydeen]

Thank you , just bought it

[toto2003]

hello fenderrio
i just bought your asset, and it look pretty cool so far, first thing come to my mind will it work with 3d text? like 3d bevel text, that would be a nice add i think
cheers

[fenderrio]

Hi toto!
Thanks for your comment. Just to clarify what you meant, do you mean fonts which are made to look 3D (eg. 779 3D Fonts - 1001 Free Fonts), or that you’d like the letters to be modeled 3D objects in the scene?
First one is possible; you can use any font you like with TextFx, including font’s that look like 3D.
Second one would take a rather large feature update! It’s something I’ve definitely thought about, but not something I plan to add immediately. There are other plugins in the store which allow you to create 3D models out of your fonts.
Cheers,
Tom