Proto Animated Text

Proto - Code Plugins - Nov 20, 2022

Print text letter-by-letter and create powerful material-driven animations.

  • Supported Platforms
  • Supported Engine Versions
    4.27, 5.0 - 5.3
  • Download Type
    Engine Plugin
    This product contains a code plugin, complete with pre-built binaries and all its source code that integrates with Unreal Engine, which can be installed to an engine version of your choice then enabled on a per-project basis.

Proto Animated Text - a lightweight rich text extension

Demo Video | Documentation | Version 1.02


Print text letter-by-letter and create powerful material-driven animations!


Insert images and interactive widgets into text!


This plugin extends Epic's default Rich Text, adding support for printing letter-by-letter, and exposing new data to font materials to make per-character animation possible. This plugin manipulates the characters of text with minimal impact on performance, and maintains the layout and justification of your rich text while it prints out.


Animations are handled by font materials, so your only limit is your imagination! With this plugin, you can access a new node in font materials. This node allows you to manipulate characters in-order (like the waving text example), randomly (like the shaking text example), and as they are being printed.


All your text styling and animations are still driven by Rich Text mark-up, just like Epic's default Rich Text. This means it's built on a proven pipeline, and localizing your strings is just as easy as before. It also means you can change animations per-localized-string if necessary.






About the Author

PROTO is an independent game developer, previously a designer and programmer on bestselling AAA games.

protowlf.com





Known Issues
  • Does not support right-to-left languages like Arabic (yet!). You can edit markup in localized strings to opt these languages out of plugin features to still render like normal Rich Text.
  • Known Issues - Visit this link for a list of known issues and workarounds.



Version 1.03
  • Support for UE5.2
  • Fixed bug where "Letter By Letter Print" settings in a ProtoTextStyle were ignored when using the shorted <t> tag for text blocks.
  • Fixed a crash when entering an in <image> block without a valid "id" metadata block.
  • Fixed images after the first failing to appear during PrintLetterByLetter
  • Fixed issues with widgets failing to appear / appearing too soon when duplicate widgets don't have unique "name" markup.


Version 1.02
  • Fixed ProtoRichTextBlocks not initializing correctly when dragged into 2D view instead of hierarchy in UMG Editor.
  • Fixed DataTable properties in ProtoRichTextBlock not allowing valid assets in 5.1.
  • Added various defensive checks in code to throw errors rather than crash in unexpected circumstances.


Version 1.01
  • Fixed crash when calling SetText on text that was not currently visible.

Technical Details

Features:

  •  New ProtoRichTextBlock widget.
  •  Print text letter-by-letter via blueprints.
  •  New material node to create per-character font animation.
  • Insert images into text.
  • Insert interactive User Widgets into text, and handle events from your ProtoRichTextBlock.
  • Driven by familiar Rich Text mark-up.
  • Fleshed-out suite of events and functions to interact with text as it prints out.
  • Example material animations and applications of animated text.
  • Simple dialogue system example with fully-functional dialogue box.


Documentation:

Documentation

  • Also includes step-by-step Quick Start Tutorial.


Available Versions:

  • Latest (V1.03):
  • UE5.2
  • UE5.1
  • Legacy (V1.02):
  • UE5.0
  • UE4.27


Code Modules:

  •  ProtoAnimatedText (Runtime)


Number of Blueprints: 0

Number of C++ Classes: 6

Supported Development Platforms: Win64

Supported Target Build Platforms: Win64

(Note: other platforms likely work, but Windows is the only tested platform)