Expressive Text in world

Displaying Expressive Text in world

Depending on the major version of the engine, you can find the expressive text actor in different places:
UE5 - Click the “Add content” button, search for Expressive Text Actor and drop it into your scene.
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UE4 - In the “Place Mode” panel, search for Expressive Text Actor and drop it into your scene.
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After dropping the actor into the world you should be able to see the following preview:
 
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The draw area preview plane is only visible when not in gameview mode - you can easily toggle gameview by pressing G while editing the scene or by accessing the viewport options.

Writing the text

 
Like the other display options, you can either display a
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Expressive Text Asset
or write your text inlined. The live-preview will auto-update after you edit any fields.
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Text preview will only show if the Realtime checkbox is toggled ON - you can access this option on viewport options
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Check out
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Justification, Alignment & Positioning
to learn how to position the text within the draw area.

Widget Settings

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Space - Allows you to switch between world-space placed text which naturally scales depending on distance, or a screen-space approach that preserves the text screen size despite the distance to the camera (e.g. a dialogue box above a character).
Light Mode - Make light interact differently with your text by switching between the different available light modes:
  • Lit: Text is shaded and affected by its surroundings. Color will vary depending on where the light is coming from.
  • Emissive: Text emits light and can light-up surrounding objects - use the emissive scale property to control the amount of glow.
Light Mode - Lit
Light Mode - Lit
Light Mode - Emissive
Light Mode - Emissive
Timing Policy - Allows you to decide if the text should tick (and therefore animate) when the game is paused.
Resolution - Define the drawable area of your text. This lets you control the definition and aspect ratio of the draw area.
 
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Tip: you can have a high resolution text and shrink the actor to achieve a high pixel density result. This boosts quality when zooming in.