Papervision3D: Dynamic TrueType Font Loading

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Papervisoin3D’s 3D text is nice, but the font choices are limited unless you want to take the time to implement your own Font3D files. I’ve been working with font parsing for the last month for another project and thought why not create a font parser for Papervision3D?

The TrueType font parsing library came from Alessandro Crugnola. It is part of an ActionScript port of the Java applications typecast. I’m in the process of writing a much leaner font parser that will have support for both TrueType and OpenType fonts.

I did make a small change to the Papervision3D library. Some of the font files do not have a complete character set. This can cause VectorLetter3D to choke.

In org.papervision3d.typography.VectorLetter3D, around line 40 I added:

if (_font.motifs.hasOwnProperty(_char)) {
	createVertices(_font.motifs[_char]);
}

if (_font.motifs.hasOwnProperty(_char)) {

createVertices(_font.motifs[_char]);

}

To load a TrueType font simply pass the font data as a ByteArray to the static class Font3DLoader and you get a Font3D object back.

var font3D:Font3D = Font3DLoader.load(trueTypeByteArray);

1	var font3D:Font3D = Font3DLoader.load(trueTypeByteArray);

If the font file contains more than one font, the first font is loaded.

11 thoughts on “Papervision3D: Dynamic TrueType Font Loading”

Flashbookmarks December 28, 2008 at 12:01 pm

Thanks, nicely done.

Source can be found at http://labs.zavoo.com/content/flex/DynamicFont3D/srcview/index.html

wormik December 28, 2008 at 4:16 pm

very cool – thanks for sharing

Jonathan Dumaine December 28, 2008 at 5:44 pm

This is wonderful. Thank you!

John Dyer December 30, 2008 at 11:53 am

Great work. This will be very useful!

Pingback: Vectorvision fonts, the easy way « Barcinski & Jeanjean

Felipe Lima January 12, 2009 at 10:12 pm

Hi! Do you know if there is already any way to do this process for OpenType fonts? I’ve noticed the majority of my fonts are OpenType, so I would appreciate a tool to generate a Font3d from an OpenType font file!
Thanks!
Felipe

james January 12, 2009 at 11:48 pm

Hi Felipe,

I currently do not have a way of generating a Font3D file without first converting the font to TrueType.

FontForge can convert OpenType to TrueType.
It is a free, open source, font editing tool that runs on Linux, OS X, and Windows.
Just open the font in FontForge and save it as TrueType.

http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/

You can find instructions for batch converting fonts at: http://www.stuermer.ch/blog/convert-otf-to-ttf-font-on-ubuntu.html

James