UMG Text Effects

Known limitations (1.0)

What 1.0 does not do, and the edges we know about. Each item says what to do instead.

Custom effects (curve assets, Blueprint or C++ effect classes) are not in 1.0. Combine the 50 built-in effects with parameters, and save combinations as presets (Custom Presets or UTE Text Effect Preset assets).
Built-in typing sounds. <voice=Name> and the typewriter preset fire On Inline Event (Name voice); play your own sound from On Letter Revealed. See Typewriter.
Effects attached to existing style rows (a <Bold> row that also waves) and word rules. Use Default Effects or preset tags.
Editor extras: a preset browser, tag highlighting and warnings in the Details panel, a “Replace with UTE Text Block” action. An unknown tag in a UTE Text Block is left to Epic’s parser (style row lookup, else shown as typed).
Reduce Motion project setting. Turn effects off by clearing Default Effects or by using text without tags.
Pixel units (a=4px). Amplitudes are in em (font size), so effects scale with the text.
A blinking typewriter cursor glyph.
World-space 3D text actors (a Widget Component with a UTE Text Block works), dialogue-system integrations, and replication of typewriter state.

Clipped letters cost a draw call each. Wipe, Roll and Glitch draw part of a letter through a clip rectangle, and Slate starts a new batch for every clip. A letter costs one extra draw call per frame while it is being clipped (two with Wipe’s soft edge, plus its shadow). That is cheap for a typewriter or a title, and expensive for thousands of letters at the same moment. Numbers: Performance.
Scaled letters use the font atlas at its normal size, so letters scaled far up (Pop overshoot, Stamp, Scale from=3) look soft at their largest. Slate’s distance-field fonts should stay sharper; we have not tested them.
Glow draws two hard outline copies (or recolors the outline when the style has one); it is not a blur. Blur is four offset copies.
Decoder scrambles with ASCII letters, digits or symbols from the run’s font. A font without those characters falls back to Slate’s fallback font for the scrambled frames. The final letter is always your font.
Global Invalidation: idle text stays cached. While a block animates, the whole Rich Text Block repaints every frame.

Right-to-left text (Arabic, Hebrew) and complex scripts (Thai, Devanagari) use Slate’s own shaping, so they should draw correctly, and typing follows reading order. We have not tested them.
Emoji and color fonts come from Slate unchanged; not tested with every effect.

The UTE Text Block avoids these; they apply only when the decorator is added to a stock Rich Text Block.

Inline images from other decorators (<img/>) appear at once while the typewriter types; they are not our runs.
Text overflow ellipsis is not applied inside a block while it animates.
On UE 5.4 and 5.5, any tag that splits a line into runs (Epic’s <Bold> or an Epic-syntax effect tag) widens that line by the text shadow’s offset, as Epic’s own style tags do there. Brace tags and the UTE Text Block do not split runs.
A rich-text font size multiplier set on the marshaller is not read by animated runs.

Setting the same text again does not restart the typewriter. Call Play Typewriter.
An automatic disappear (after=) fires no event. Remove the widget on a timer if you need to.
Ghost needs a moving effect next to it (<wave><ghost>...</></>); a ghost alone has nothing to echo.
Repel follows a finger that is down, then the mouse. Set Pointer Position overrides both (gamepad cursor).
Platforms other than Windows and Android are not enabled in 1.0; see Engines and platforms.

Found something not listed here? Email support@barbedwireglovegames.games with your engine version and a short description.