** Please post TextMesh Pro related questions in the Unity UI & TextMesh Pro section of the user forum. Be sure to add the TextMeshPro prefix to these posts.
Hello Everyone!
After months of development, I am pleased to announce that TextMesh Pro! is now available in the Asset Store.
Developing TextMesh Pro has been a rewarding and challenging experience thus far. I hope that TextMesh Pro will live up to expectations and I will certainly continue to strive to make sure it does. I look forward to your feedback and answering any questions you may have. So without further ado, let’s take a look at what TextMesh Pro is and what it can do for you.
- Stephan B.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The latest beta releases of TextMesh Pro with support for Unity 4.6 and the new UI as well as beta releases for Unity 5.0 are available to all registered users of the product on the TextMesh Pro User Forum. Once your registration to the forum has been approved, you will find the latest beta releases in the “TMPro - Alpha & Beta Releases” section of the forum.
INTRODUCING
Three TextMesh Pro objects as seen in the Unity Editor.
What is TextMesh Pro?
TextMesh Pro! is the ultimate replacement for Unity’s built-in Text Mesh Component (a.k.a. 3D Text). It was designed to provide users with a more powerful and flexible solution for their text creation layout needs while remaining easy to use and with improved performance.
Advanced Real-Time Text Rendering
Text is an important part of any game or project and as such shouldn’t your text always look amazing? TextMesh Pro uses an advanced text rendering technique known as Signed Distance Field “SDF” text rendering. The combination of SDF text rendering and a set of advanced custom shaders delivers substantial visual quality improvements over normal bitmap fonts while giving users amazing flexibility when it comes to font styling texturing. Of course, TextMesh Pro also supports and works with bitmap fonts.
“S” Letters shows some of the dynamic changes that can be applied to a single SDF font asset. With the exception of the first bitmap “S”, all visible text including the captions is an example of SDF based text rendering.
Amazing Flexibility & Quality
Besides the amazing visual quality improvements made possible by our advanced text rendering, another huge benefits is that we can virtually get an unlimited number of visual styles treatments from a single SDF Font Atlas and they look great at any point size. In addition, SDF font atlases are typically smaller in size than their bitmap based counterparts.
Close up - These two letters are using the same SDF Font Atlas. They are simply using two different materials.
Real-Time dynamic text font styling texturing.
Custom Editors & Improved Text Formatting
Starting with a larger text input box to a more comprehensive list of Rich Text which include underline, superscript, subscript or size to dynamic character spacing or word wrapping as well as support for kerning, TextMesh Pro! has you covered.
TMPro Inspector Material Editor Panel
Example showing superscript, subscript and center justification.
Partial list of some of the Rich Text Tags available in TextMeshPro.
Built-in Font Asset Creator
Want to use some new TrueType or OpenType font but need to create a font atlas for it? Not a problem with TextMesh Pro!. Just import your font in Unity. Open the built-in Font Asset Creator and within 30 seconds your new font asset is ready.
Built-in Font Asset Creator. No need for any external tools. Create normal bitmap font assets or SDF font assets with the built-in Font Asset Creator.
Intuitive User Interface
TextMesh Pro! features several custom inspectors editor panels. They were created to give users access to what they need while keeping things simple.
Shown TextMesh Pro!'s custom editor material inspector.
Scripting Interface
Need to create or modify text objects via scripts? All of Unity’s components offer a scripting interface and so does TextMesh Pro! All of the relevant properties of TextMesh Pro! can be accessed via script.
Example of TextMesh Pro! object creation via script.
TextMesh Pro! Main Features
- Easy to use with simple UI featuring custom inspectors and editor panels.
- Supports both Bitmap & Signed Distance Field font atlases.
- Built-in Bitmap & SDF font atlas creation tool.
- Most accurate & highest quality SDF Text Rendering tool.
- TrueType OpenType font support.
- 2D Text objects can be created in the Editor or dynamically via scripts.
- Greatly improved performance over Unity’s 3D Text and TextMesh
- Optimized to avoid Runtime Memory Allocations and keeping the Garbage Collector away.
Formatting Styling Options
- Dynamic font sizing. SDF font atlas renders sharp and great looking text at any sizes.
- Rich Text support. Per character tags include color, bold, italic, underline, superscript, subscript, size, tab, space and position.
- Text Anchoring - The usual 9 positions.
- Text Alignment - Left, Center, Right and Justified.
- Control over Character, Line and Paragraph spacing.
- Automatic word-wrapping with control over word or space tracking.
- Kerning support along with Kerning Pair editor.
- Multiple Texturing Mapping options.
Material Presets & Built-in Custom Shaders
- Custom Context menu to enable easy creation of material presets and managing of materials.
- Optimized shaders designed for OpenGL ES 2.0 compatible devices. (iphone 3gs and later)
- Basic Bitmap text shader
- Face vertex color
- Face Texturing with multiple mapping options
- Basic SDF text shader
- Face vertex color
- Advanced SDF text shader
- Face vertex color
- Face texturing with multiple mapping options
- Border texturing
- Border thickness softness control
- Beveling + Glow control
- Advanced Surface SDF text shader
- Real-time lighting shadow casting
- Plus same features as Advanced SDF text shader
Contact Information Useful Links
- TextMesh Pro (Asset Store)
- Dedicated User Support Forum
- WIP Thread with lots of examples.
- API Documentation
- Email: Support@DigitalNativeStudios.com
- Twitter: @Zolran
Once again, should you have any questions, please feel free to ask. It will be my pleasure to reply to you.