TextMeshDOTS

TextMeshDOTS renders world space text similar to TextMeshPro. Its is a standalone text package for DOTS, forked from Latios Framework/Calligraphics.

Dynamic Atlas Textures Prior to version 0.9.0, TextMeshDOTS used static font atlas textures from TextCore FontAssets. As of version 0.9.0, TextMeshDOTS generates all required font textures dynamically. Using the Harfbuzz library, TextMeshDOTS is now using native truetype (*.ttf) and opentype fonts (*.otf), and does not need Unity Font or FontAsset. The HarfbuzzUnity plugin for MacOS, Linux and Windows was made by Dreaming381.

Color Emoji :-) TextMeshDOTS is now capable to render COLRv1 emoji fonts. Bitmap and svg emoji fonts are currently not supported.

Font Family support: Lastly, a new feature in TextMeshDOTS version 0.9.0 is the ability to automaticaly work with font families, so e.g. select the "bold-italic" member when that style is selected (more below).

Rich Text: TextMeshDOTS supports many rich text tags like TextMeshPro and TextCore (see section below for details). User selectable opentype features can be enabled using rich text tags such as <sub>(subscript), <sup>(superscript), <frac> (fractions), <smcp> (smallcaps).

Unity DOTS: TextMeshDOTS leverages the Unity Entities package, BURST, and jobs to generate all data required for rendering, and Unity Entities Graphics for rendering. The included HDRP and URP shader are wrapper around the TextMeshPro 4.0 SRP shader.

How to use

(1) Autoring workflow

• Generate backend mesh and materials: Menue --> TextMeshDOTS --> Text BackendMesh, Menue --> TextMeshDOTS --> Generate materials

  • this only needs to be done once in a given project. The generated assets are placed into Resources folder, and are expected there by the runtime

• Create a SubScene

• Add empty GameObject, and TextRenderer component on it

• As for font usage, you need to drop all fonts you intend to use in a given TextRender into the Fonts list. You got two options for doing so

  1. System Fonts: you want to use fonts that you know can be found on the target device
  2. you want to include the font files into your build

• To use System Fonts, you can drop the ttf and otf files anywhere in your project. Unity cannot be stopped converting this to a font asset, but this font asset is actually not needed and all information in it will be ignored. Drop the Font assets you wish to use in a given TextRender into the Fonts list. Utilizing harfbuzz, the backer will fetch requiered data directly from the native ttf or otffile to be able to find the font at runtime on the device.

• To include the font files into your build, create under Assets a subfolder called StreamingAssets. Drag and drop all ttf and otf files you intend to use there. You can organize fonts in further subfolders as you wish. Drag and drop all font files you wish to use in a given TextRender into the Fonts list.

• Please note, that pretty much any font such as "Arial" in Windows actually constists of multiple font files (e.g. one for regular, one for bold, one for italic, one for bold italic. There can be many more to provide variations of font width (regular, condensed etc) and weigth (Sembibold, Black etc). You need all of these files to enable TextMeshDOTS to automatically select the right font when you apply FontStyles. Fontsyles are changed either using the buttons on the TextRenderer, or via rich text tags such as <b>, <i>. Alternatively <font> can be used to explicitly select a font. TextMeshDOTS can simulate bold and italic when those variants are missing, but this should be the exception and not the default.

• Type in some text or rich text

• You should now see the text

(2) Runtime instantiation workflow

• Generate backend mesh and materials: Menue --> TextMeshDOTS --> Text BackendMesh, Menue --> TextMeshDOTS --> Generate materials
  • this only needs to be done once in a given project. The generated assets are placed into Resources folder, and are expected there by the runtime
• Enable & modify TextMeshDOTS/RuntimeSpawner/RuntimeSingleFontTextRendererSpawner.cs or RuntimeMultiFontTextRendererSpawner.cs as needed to spawn any number of TextRenderer entities. Per default, auto creation of both systems is disabled.
• You will notice, that you need to manually fill out a lot of information in the FontRequest struct for every font you intend to use. This information can be extracted utilizing the FontUtility Scriptable Object.
  • Right click in a folder, then Create --> TextMeshDOTS --> Font Utility
  • Drag and drop the fonts from StreamingAssets or from anywhere else in your project (in case you intend to use System Fonts) into the font field, and copy the information over into your runtime spawner. I know this is cumbersome, but I did not see it so far as well invested time to automate runtime spawning via a baking workflow. I want to keep only one unified path for triggering runtime font loading/unloading (via FontBlobReference)
• Hit play

Supported Richtext Tags

<align=...> <allcaps>, <alpha=xx>, <b>, <color=...>, <cspace=xx>, <font=...>, <font-weight=xxx>, <font-width=xxx.x>, <fraction>, <i>, <indent=xx> <lowercase>, <sub>, <sup>, <size=xx>, <space=000.00>, <mspace=xx.x>, <smallcaps>, <scale=xx.x>, <rotate=00>, <voffset=00>. Permitted size units are 'pt','px', 'em' and '%' or nothing (e.g. font-weight, font-width). Permitted values for named colors (<color=red>) are red, lightblue, blue, grey, black, green, white, orange, purple, yellow. String values (such as named colors or font names) are recognized with and without surrounding quotation marks. Hexadecimal colors are either specified using the color keyword <color=#005500>, or directly without the color keyword as <#005500>. Alpha values are specified via <alpha=#FF>.

Known issues

• <aling> works only for left, center and right (not justified and flush)
• <sub> and <sup> are currently implemented using the font opentype feature. For most fonts, this only works for digits and a few characters. One could simulate this via scaling & offsetting, but this comes at the cost of glyphs that are optically too thin

Special Thanks To the original authors and contributors

• Dreaming381 - not only has he created the amazing Latios Framework, including the Calligraphics text module, but has also been of tremendous support in figuring out how to create a standalone version of Calligraphics that uses Entity Graphics instead of the Kinemation rendering engine. Furthermore, Dreaming381 made the harfbuzz library accessible as plugin across platforms via the HarfbuzzUnity plugin for MacOS, Linux and Windows
• Sovogal – significant contributions to the Calligraphics module of Latios Framework (including the name)