Japanese Font Display Issue in UI Text Entity - Characters Show as `[]` Boxes

Description:

I’m experiencing an issue with displaying Japanese text in 8th Wall Studio’s UI Text entity.
Despite uploading a working Japanese TTF font and successfully converting it to .font8, Japanese characters are displayed as [] [] [] [] boxes instead of the actual text.

What I’ve tried:

  1. Font verification: The original TTF file (Noto Sans JP) displays Japanese text correctly in Windows Font Preview, showing hiragana, katakana, and kanji properly.

  2. Successful conversion: The TTF file was successfully uploaded to 8th Wall Studio and automatically converted to .font8 format.

  3. Font configuration: In the UI Element component, I have:

    • Selected the converted Japanese font from the dropdown
    • Set appropriate font size (48-60px)
    • Set sufficient width (400-500px)
    • Input Japanese text: こんにちは、世界!
  4. Debugging results: I created a troubleshooting component that revealed:

    • :white_check_mark: Default font works with Japanese text (in console logs)
    • :white_check_mark: Custom font works with English text
    • :white_check_mark: Custom font “appears” to work with Japanese text (console shows success)
    • :cross_mark: But viewport still shows [] [] [] [] boxes

The core issue:

While the console logs indicate that Japanese text is being set successfully (cursor.text = 'こんにちは世界'), the actual rendering in the viewport displays placeholder boxes instead of Japanese characters.

Questions:

  1. Is there a known limitation with Japanese/CJK character rendering in UI Text entities?
  2. Are there specific font format requirements for Japanese fonts beyond TTF→.font8 conversion?
  3. Are there alternative approaches for displaying Japanese text in 8th Wall Studio projects?
  4. Could this be related to the font subset during conversion process?

Environment:

  • 8th Wall Studio (latest version)
  • Browser: Chrome
  • Font: Noto Sans JP (Regular, downloaded from Google Fonts)
  • Text: Japanese hiragana, katakana, and kanji characters

Expected behavior:

Japanese characters should display properly in the UI Text entity when using an uploaded Japanese font.

Actual behavior:

Japanese characters appear as empty rectangular boxes [] despite successful font upload and conversion.

Any guidance or workarounds would be greatly appreciated!


Additional technical details:

  • Font file size: ~117KB after upload
  • Font preview in 8th Wall Studio asset browser shows only English/Latin characters and symbols
  • Console debugging shows successful text setting but visual rendering fails

Hi, welcome to the forum!

Non-English characters are still a work in progress.

1 Like

Thank you for the clear answer!
I’ll look into alternative approaches while waiting for non-English character support.

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