TextBlock / TextMeshPro In-line Sprites

[Arcfalt]

Are in-line sprites, just the base functionality of them in TextMeshPro, supported in Nova's TextBlocks?

Currently when I try to use them, they show up completely solid color, like below.
(Regular in-world text mesh pro object on the left, and a Nova TextBlock on the right)

The text in these is simply Test <sprite name="right1"> where right1 is the button image there.

[dkonik]

The short answer to your question is: no, this is currently not supported. To pull a quote from the TextBlock Documentation:

TextBlocks use a modified version of the TextMeshPro/Mobile/Distance Field shader to render, meaning TextMeshPro features exclusively supported through other TextMeshPro shaders (or custom shaders) are currently not supported by TextBlocks.

And in-line sprites with TMP use the TextMeshPro/Sprite shader, which is why the sprite is showing up as solid white. Since this is the documented/expected behavior, I am marking this as "By Design". However, we can definitely see the usefulness of this feature, so if you would like I would be more than happy to convert this to a feature request!

And, while this could get clunky if you wanted to add sprites in the middle of text, if you wanted a workaround to show icons at the end of your text (and automatically account for changes to the text, font size, etc), you could: set the TextBlock size to Shrink on the x-axis, use a UIBlock2D to render your sprite, and have a UIBlock as the parent of both the TextBlock and the UIBlock2D set to AutoLayout on the x-axis.

[drizztdourden08]

@dkonik Hey. It might not be supported but it doesn't seems to me like it would be super difficult. While trying to use it right now, I can make it work by changing only two thing in the submesh.

Before:

First one is to activate the "Mesh Renderer" on the submesh, we get a semi transparent background with the sprite.

Second one is to change ANYTHING in the shader itself. To be honest, I'm not sure exactly what makes it work here because after you for example check or uncheck "Use Alpha Clip", it just refresh the render to what it's suposed to looks like, no matter if the end configuration is for the shader.

The end result is exactly what we would expect. At this point, if you do ANYTHING of consequence in the project (Save, or make the GO a prefab for example), it will go back to it's initial point.

That means, even though I can reach the expected point, It will revert back no matter. My guess is that you re-render it and refresh the nova config to ensure it works properly, ending up breaking it every times.

Although everyone says that for everything, I think this is a required functionality as there are a lot of games with inline sprite and the use cases are plenty. (Like this message 5 seconds after booting mine :))

[drizztdourden08]

here's a video for maybe more clarity how I got there:

Sorry for the music. Didn't realize it was on.

NVIDIA_Share_Qay3U5tFHV.mp4

[Arcfalt]

Thanks for the input! I'd definitely like it as a feature request if possible.

We've definitely had to use the clunky workaround before in an old project using regular ugui text before textmesh pro was the standard in ugui, but we frequently have buttons in the middle of text and even in multiline text such as in tutorial prompts, just to make it extra clunky again haha.

I'm aware textmesh pro has the ability to give the position of specific characters in its generated mesh, so my thinking for now knowing this isn't a bug is that I suppose I can place a special character and get it's position, and place a sprite over top as a bit of a workaround. However if Nova were to add native support for textmesh pro's in-line sprites that would be an amazing feature for us in the future.

Thanks!

[JadenH]

I had to add support for TextMeshPro sprites for my project. I dumped the diff of the changes in the text file below. If I made your day a little better, drop by https://snowfall.games/ and sign up for the newsletter or something. Cheers!

novaui_textmeshpro_sprites_diff.txt

[metallibus]

There appears to be one missing diff in this:
NovaShaderPreprocessor.cs also needs to be updated so it knows how to map shaders back to their visual type. The change is pretty trivial but I had to add a branch at line 102 to detect the new shader and map it to VisualType.TextSprite in TryGetVisualType(...):

// Existing code:
else if (shaderName.Contains("TextBlock"))
{
     visualType = VisualType.TextBlock;
     return true;
}
// Added branch:
else if (shaderName.Contains("TextSprite"))
{
      visualType = VisualType.TextSprite;
      return true;
}

Otherwise, it never seems to include the shader properly. In my experience, it was fine in the Editor, but actual player builds would spit out a pink rectangle in the wrong spot since it was never able to compile the shader.

I also ended up adding the NovaTextSpriteUnlit shader to Edit > Project Settings > Graphics > Always Included Shaders though it doesn't seem to be necessary.