Oh, well that's great news. Sorry, I forgot gradient could be interpreted a few different ways. I'll give it a try, but I certainly wouldn't turn down some help. I really only have experience with shader graph and even that's pretty spotty. So I've duplicated the "STM Ultra" shader as well as the "STMultra" shader include file. I updated the shader to include the new STMultra.cginc, and added a second outline color in the shader file: [ShowIf(EFFECT_OUTLINE)] _OutlineColor2 ("Outline Color 2", Color) = (0,0,0,1). I then updated my Super Text to use the new shader. Right now I'm trying to get the second outline color to appear in the inspector, which seems to be less straightforward than I thought. I'll keep at it, but if you think you could make the adjustment fairly easily I went ahead and sent you my invoice number. It would be cool to see gradient outlines as a built-in feature in the next update for other shader un-inclined people like myself.
amesaros
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Yes I guess that's true, haha. I stumbled upon this indie project randomly that has the effect I'm trying to achieve. Don't know the name, unfortunately: link
You'll notice letters have a 1-pixel thick purple-to-blue outline. The gradients are little irregular (notice how some of the numbers are mostly blue), which might hint at how it was done. Also we have a shine effect over the text in the input field , which I suspect is just a shader. And then lastly some special effects on the selected letter, which I'm not particularly concerned with.
I mainly wanted it for my character creation screen to make it more visually distinct from the other menu text, which may also include an on-screen keyboard. I'm hesitant to use raster-based graphics for a handful of reasons, but if that's how the above effect was achieved who am I to argue. I just feel like even if there's no practical way to have gradients built-in with the outline, there's gotta be some way to fake it by drawing a gradient image on top of the letter or set of letters and then masking it to only appear on the outline. I just don't know enough about masking as it relates to text or if I'd need some kind of shader to do it.
I understand, thanks for the info. I'm surprised I can't find support for this feature anywhere since it's pretty common in graphic design, but I guess there's a technical reason it must be difficult. Perhaps there's some way I can overlay a gradient and then mask it somehow? I'll just have to keep looking I guess.