I'm want to create pixel perfect text meshes using unity's built in 3d textmesh, without using any other plugins. Since dynamic text is texture based as well, there should be a ratio between font size, text size and orthogonal camera size to make it pixel perfect.
I know that its not possible to make built-in 3d textmesh pixel perfect for perspective cameras since text size (and texture atlas size) will be effected from the perspective scale; however for orthogonal cameras that should be possible.
Online sources does not state the connection between the ratios I mentioned above; most of the people I've spoken do not really care about making text pixel perfect. However I do think it's very important especially if dynamic text is going to be used in a 2d game, and needs to fit to screen pixels.
If it needs to be pixel perfect, the only solution would be to use GUI text. If, however, you expect to animate it in a way that can't be done with OnGUI, or intend to partially cover the text with another object, I would recommend cranking up the font size, and the scale down. This will at least make the text very sharp, making it appear pixel perfect. I have used a font size = 100 and scale = 0.05 for x y and z in a 2D game to achieve a very clear and easy to read font.
Related
I'm new to Unity and to game development in general.
I would like to make a text-based game.
I'm looking to reproduce the behavior of an instant messenger like messenger or whatapp.
I made the choice to use the Unity UI system for the pre-made components like the rect scroll.
But this choice led me to the following problem:
I have "bubbles" of dialogs, which must be able to grow in width as well as in height with the size of the text. Fig.1
I immediately tried to use VectorGraphics to import .svg with the idea to move runtime the points of my curves of Beziers.
But I did not find how to access these points and edit them runtime.
I then found the "Sprite shapes" but they are not part of the "UI",
so if I went with such a solution, I would have to reimplement
scroll, buttons etc...
I thought of cutting my speech bubble in 7 parts Fig.2 and scaling it according to the text size. But I have the feeling that this is very heavy for not much.
Finally I wonder if a hybrid solution would not be the best, use the
UI for scrolling, get transforms and inject them into Shape sprites
(outside the Canvas).
If it is possible to do 1. and then I would be very grateful for an example.
If not 2. 3. 4. seem feasible, I would like to have your opinion on the most relevant of the 3.
Thanks in advance.
There is a simpler and quite elegant solution to your problem that uses nothing but the sprite itself (or rather the design of the sprite).
Take a look at 9-slicing Sprites from the official unity documentation.
With the Sprite Editor you can create borders around the "core" of your speech bubble. Since these speech bubbles are usually colored in a single color and contain nothing else, the ImageType: Sliced would be the perfect solution for what you have in mind. I've created a small Example Sprite to explain in more detail how to approach this:
The sprite itself is 512 pixels wide and 512 pixels high. Each of the cubes missing from the edges is 8x8 pixels, so the top, bottom, and left borders are 3x8=24 pixels deep. The right side has an extra 16 pixels of space to represent a small "tail" on the bubble (bottom right corner). So, we have 4 borders: top=24, bottom=24, left=24 and right=40 pixels. After importing such a sprite, we just have to set its MeshType to FullRect, click Apply and set the 4 borders using the Sprite Editor (don't forget to Apply them too). The last thing to do is to use the sprite in an Image Component on the Canvas and set the ImageType of this Component to Sliced. Now you can scale/warp the Image as much as you like - the border will always keep its original size without deforming. And since your bubble has a solid "core", the Sliced option will stretch this core unnoticed.
Edit: When scaling the Image you must use its Width and Height instead of the (1,1,1)-based Scale, because the Scale might still distort your Image. Also, here is another screenshot showing the results in different sizes.
I am currently making a mobile match-3 like game in unity. I have made all the graphics for the gems(the objects with which you make the matches) in Inkscape at 256x256 and exported them(PNG Files) with 90 dpi(also tried with 360 but nothing changed). My problem is that when I run the game in the editor the graphics seem to be "pixelated" and blurry. In my sprite settings I've set Pixels per Unit to 256, checked Generate Mip Maps, I am using Bilinear Filter Mode and the aniso level is 0. I have also set the max size to 256 and compression to high quality(My Main Camera's size is 10 but I tried to change that and nothing changed as far as the quality of the sprites). What can I do to "perfectly" display my sprites? Do I have to export them in some other way from Inkscape or do I have to change some Unity's settings?
Thank you.
NOTE: My sprites are not "pixel art"!
Edit(Added photos of the purple gem as file and how it is shown in editor):
Because scaling
You're display resolution on the images isn't a 256x256 region where those images are displayed, which means that they must be scaled in some manner in order to display in the desired region. Camera rendering is notoriously bad at scaling. As your images aren't Vector (and Unity doesn't support vector graphic formats anyway), scaling will always result in a loss of detail. Detail like hard edges.
Your options are:
smaller images where you have complete control over how the image is scaled down
bilinear filtering (which is fundamentally blurry)
mipmaps (which are automatically scaled down versions of your image in powers of two)
If the later two aren't giving satisfactory results, your only option is the first.
I'm building a 5x5 grid based game as a learning project and am having difficulty getting text to display and scale properly when nested in a prefab with a background image in it.
is fontSize in Units? If not, what is fontSize relative to? The text is either gigantic, or small, but blurred to the point of a smudge.
I feel like the documentation on this subject is a little ambiguous.
This forum thread is a little dated, but it might be helpful for you to see how they based font size on screen size:
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/changing-text-size-relative-to-screen.102876/
Agreed, the documentation could be clearer on this:
"Adjusting the font size effectively changes how many pixels are used for each glyph in this generated texture. Text Mesh assets are 3d geometry textured with these auto-generated font textures. You will want to vary the size of the font to make these assets look crisp"
I've been searching around for this one for a bit, and unfortunately I can't seem to find any good, consistent results. So, in the Unity UI system, buttons can stretch without becoming pixelated or distorted. This is because the texture is split up into 9 parts - the corners, middle, and sides.
This works because the button's middle and sides are stretched, but not the corners. Then, the button appears not pixelated, at any dimension.
So, the question is as follows: How can I do the same thing for a transparent, unlit texture in 3D space? I have a speech bubble texture on a flat plane that I know how to re-scale to fit the text in the speech bubble.
I've set the texture type to Multiple Sprite, and divided it up into 9 parts. However, I cannot seem to find where I can set the texture to act like the UI button does, and I'm not sure that this is even possible in this way in 3D space.
Is there a way, or should I just make the different parts of the texture different objects, and move them together? That would seem very inefficient and ugly compared to this.
To accomplish what you are asking, you would need to create tiles for this speech bubble and then write a script that procedurally builds a speech bubble based on the plane's scale value. You could also try just changing the texture's Filter Mode to Point.
However I really don't think you should be using textures for this anyway. Why not just use a Unity Canvas and set the Render Mode to World Space? Then you can just set your text box to be a sprite, not a texture, and set its filter mode to Point (See below). This would also make it a lot easier for when you want there to be text in the speech bubble later on.
In Unity, when writing shaders,
is it possible for the shader itself to "know" what the screen resolution is, and indeed for the shader to control single physical pixels?
I'm thinking only of the case of writing shaders for 2D objects (such as for UI use, or at any event with an ortho camera).
(Of course, normally to show a physical-pixel perfect PNG on screen, you merely have a say 400 pixel PNG, and you arrange scaling so that the shader, happens to be drawing to, precisely 400 physical pixels. What I'm wondering about is a shader that just draws, for example a physical-pixel perfect black line - it would have to "know" exactly where the physical-pixels are.)
There is a ShaderLab built-in value called _ScreenParams.
_ScreenParams.x is the screen width in pixels.
_ScreenParams.y is the screen height in pixels.
Here's the documentation page: http://docs.unity3d.com/462/Documentation/Manual/SL-BuiltinValues.html
I don't think this is going to happen. Your rendering is tied to current selected video mode and it doesn't even have to match your physical screen size (if that is what you mean by pixel-perfect).
The closest you are going to get with this is if you render at recommended resolution for your display device and use pixel shader to shade an entire screen. This way, one 'physical pixel' is going to be roughly equal to one actual rendered pixel. Other than that, it is impossible to associate physical (that is your display's) pixels to rendered ones.
This is unless, of course, I somehow misunderstood your intentions.
is it possible for the shader itself to "know" what the screen resolution is
I don't think so.
and indeed for the shader to control single physical pixels?
Yes. Pixel shaders know what pixel they are drawing and can also sample other pixels.
First of all, please define 'Pixel perfect' and 'Physical pixel'.
If by physical pixel you mean your display's pixel (monitor, laptop display, any other hardware you might use) then you are out of luck. Shaders don't operate on those, they operate on their own 'abstract pixels'.
You can think about it in this way:
Your graphics are rendered in a picture with some configurable resolution (say 800x600 pixels). You can still display this picture on a 1920x1080 display in full screen no problem, it would look crappy though. This is what's happening with actual display and video card rendering. What determines the actual amount of rendered pixels is your video mode (picture's resolution in the above example). And physical pixels are your display's pixels. When rendering you can only operate on the first kind.
This leads us to a conclusion that when you render the graphics at the exact same resolution as your display's native resolution, you can safely say that you endeed render it as 'Physical Pixels'.
In unity, you can pass the renderer some external data (this might include your current screen resolution (for example as a Vector2, see this).
However you most likely don't need any of this, since pixel shaders already operate on pixels (rendered pixels, determined by your current video mode). That means that if you use some resolution which is lesser than your native one, you most likely will not be able to render a single pixel.
Hope it helped.