Distance Field / Distance Field Overlay Mobile Shaders

The Distance Field and Distance Field Overlay shaders are two nearly-identical variants of the TextMesh Pro signed distance field (SDF)shader. The difference between the two is that the Distance Field Overlay variant always renders the TextMesh Pro object on top of everything else in the Scene, while the Distance Field variant renders the Scene normally—objects in front of the TextMesh Pro object are rendered on top of the text.

Both of these variants are unlit, meaning they do not interact with Scene lighting. Instead, they can simulate local directional lighting effects.

Properties

The Distance Field and Distance Field Overlay shaders have identical properties, which you can edit in the TextMesh Pro object Inspector.

Properties are divided into several sections, some of which you must enable in order to activate the property group.

Face: Controls the text's overall appearance.

Outline: Adds a colored and/or textured outline to the text.

Underlay: Adds a second rendering of the text underneath the original rendering, for example to add a drop shadow.

Debug Settings: Exposes internal shader properties that are sometimes useful for troubleshooting.

Face

The Face properties control the overall appearance of the text.

Property:	Description
Color	Adjust the face color of the text. The value you set here is multiplied with the vertex Colors you set in the TextMeshPro component. Set this to white to use the original vertex colors. Set this to black to cancel out the vertex colors. Similarly, setting the Alpha to 1 uses the original vertex-color alpha, while setting it to 0 removes any alpha set in the original vertex colors.
Softness	Adjust the softness of the text edges. A value of 0 produces crisp, anti-aliased edges. Values greater than 0 produce increasingly soft/blurry edges. This setting applies to both the text face and the outline.
Dilate	Adjust the position of the text contour in the font distance field. A value of 0 places the contour halfway, which corresponds to the contour of the original font. Negative values thin the characters, while positive values thicken them.

Outline

The outline properties allow you to add an outline to the text and control its appearance. The outline is not visible unless you set a Thickness value greater than 0.

Property:	Description
Color	Adjust the color for the text outline.
Thickness	Adjust the thickness of the outline. The higher the value, the thicker the line. The outline is drawn on the text contour, with half its thickness inside the contour and half of it outside the contour. You can pull it farther in or push it farther out by adjusting the Face > Dilate property.

Underlay

Underlay adds an additional rendering of the text underneath the original rendering. You can use it to add a drop-shadow effect.

Property:		Description
Underlay Type		Choose the type of underlay to render.
	None	No underlay.
	Normal	Renders the underlay underneath the original text. This creates a standard drop-shadow style effect.
	Inner	Inverts the underlay and masks it with the original text so it is only visible inside the outline of the original letters. This creates the type of drop shadow you would see through a cutout of the text. To see an Inner underlay, you must make the text face transparent by setting its Alpha to 0.
Color		Set the color of the underlay text. The default is a semi-transparent black.
Offset X/Offset Y		Offset the underlay text horizontally and vertically from the original text. For example, if you’re using the underlay to create a drop shadow, you can position it to suggest a specific lighting direction.
Dilate		Adjust the position of the underlay text contour in the font's distance field. A value of 0 places the contour halfway, which corresponds to the contour of the original font. Negative values thin the characters, while positive values thicken them.
Softness		Adjust the softness of the underlay text edges. A value of 0 produces crisp, anti-aliased edges. Values greater than 0 produce increasingly soft/blurry edges. When using the underlay to create a drop-shadow, you can use this setting to make the shadows harder or softer.

Debug Settings

The debug section exposes some of the shader’s internal properties. They can be helpful for troubleshooting problems you encounter with the shader.

Property:		Description
Font Atlas		Points to the atlas texture used by the font Asset.
Gradient Scale		Represents the spread / range of the font’s signed distance field. This determines the effective range of material properties such as Outline > Width and Underlay > Offset X/Y. This value is equal to Padding +1, with Padding being the Padding value set when the font Asset was created. Note: This value is displayed for debugging purposes. You should not edit it manually.
Texture Width/Texture Height		Displays the texture atlas width and height specified in the Atlas Resolution settings when the font Asset was created.
Scale X/Scale X		Set multipliers for the SDF scale. When set to 0, characters are rendered as blocks. Negative values soften the characters, while positive values make them appear sharper.
Perspective Filter		When using a perspective camera, adjust this setting to make text look softer when viewed at sharp angles. The default setting of 0.875 is adequate in most cases. When using orthographic cameras, set this to 0.
Offset X/Offset Y		Offset the vertex positions of each character in X and Y. You can change these values using a script to create simulated crawl or scrolling FX.
Softness X/Softness Y		When Mask is set to Soft, set these to adjust the softness of the edge of the text.
Clip Rect		Clip Rect defines the Left (L), Bottom (B), Right (R) and Top (T) world space coordinates of the masking rectangle. This is normally set automatically by the 2D RectMask. However when using a normal TextMeshPro component, this allows you to set / control the masking region.

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