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Bitmap Font Generator
This program will allow you to generate bitmap fonts from TrueType fonts. The application generates both image files and character descriptions that can be read by a game for easy rendering of fonts.
download installer for v1.12 (344KB)
If you don't have an image viewer capable of reading TGA, PNG, or DDS files, I recommend PUPP, another free product from AngelCode.
Features
- Support for complete Unicode 5.1 character set, as well as 8 bit OEM character sets
- Optimal use of texture space, i.e. as little unused area as possible
- Support for kerning pairs
- Easy to use file format, either normal text file or xml files. Binary format is available for those that prefer that
- 8bit or 32bit texture output (TGA, PNG, and DDS files)
- Option for packing 4 layers of font images into 1 32bit texture. Needs special shader to render with, but saves a lot of memory
- Anti-aliasing, both through Windows native font smoothing and super sampling
- Configurable padding and spacing between characters
- Select characters from text file, supports both UTF8 and UTF16 encoded files
- Generate bitmap font from command line
- Import colored images as characters, supports: bmp, jpg, tga, dds, png
- Optional outline to font characters
- Optional packing of characters with outline into 1 channel. Needs special shader to unpack during rendering, but saves a lot of memory.
Tutorials
Here are a few tutorials/demos that show how to render text with bitmap fonts generated by BMFont.
Changes
- 1.12 - 2009/08/02
- Added presets to the export options to aid choosing the correct values for the texture channels.
- Fixed bug when generating font from command line where the page files in the font descriptor would have the incorrect name.
- Added ability to invert individual texture channels for more export options.
- Added command line tool that will wait for the generation to complete before exiting.
- Fixed the yoffset when the font height was scaled.
- Fixed bug in select chars from file for non-unicode with characters above ASCII 127.
- The number of digits for the page id in the texture files is now adapted to the number of generated pages.
- Added support for adjusting xoffset, yoffset, and advance for imported icons.
- 1.11b - 2009/03/08
- Fixed a bug in the select chars from file with UTF16 encoded files.
- Fixed a bug in the packing routine that could make characters overlap in rare situations.
- Fixed the selection of unicode ranges by clicking on the check mark in the list.
- 1.11a - 2008/12/06
- Fixed the subpixel misalignment in the glyph height caused by supersampling.
- Worked around a bug in GDI where the returned glyph height is smaller than the actual glyph bitmap.
- 1.11 - 2008/10/11
- Fixed a freeze that could happen while selecting characters from file.
- Fixed cropping in some true type fonts.
- Fixed the 'Select All Chars' option in ASCII mode.
- Added option 'Output invalid char glyph'.
- Removed the 'Disable unavailable chars' option.
- Fixed problem where characters not defined in the unicode standard could be selected when selecting chars from file.
- An indicator is now displayed in the character grid where images are imported.
- Fixed bug where main window is moved behind other windows when closing image manager.
- Fixed bug where cancelling the icon image dialog would still effectivate the changes.
- It's now possible to select font size by character height, rather than line height.
- 1.10b - 2008/06/15
- Fixed the channel indicator in the font descriptor for colored icons.
- Fixed cropping of characters in small fonts.
- Fixed bug with black 8bit textures when the check box for pack chars is checked.
- 1.10a - 2008/06/08
- Corrected the documentation in regards to the block size value in the binary file format.
- Fixed a bug with the 'Select chars from file' where some character might be skipped between reading blocks of 1kb.
- Fixed a rounding problem with supersampling that made the exported line height be one less than the largest character height.
- Removed the external dependency on the Microsoft DLLs.
- Upgraded libpng to 1.2.29.
- 1.10 - 2008/05/11
- Selecting characters from file now supports both UTF-8 and UTF-16, with automatic detection via byte-order-mark.
- Fixed a bug where unicode subsets where not shown when disable undefined characters was unselected.
- Status bar shows character id for the character under the mouse cursor.
- Added "clear all" option.
- Preview window is now automatically resized to fit the texture when scaling.
- Added support for unicode characters above 0xFFFF.
- Added support for generating textures with DXT1, DXT3, and DXT5 compression.
- Split the font settings dialog in two dialogs, one for the font graphics and one for export options.
- The content of each texture channel can now be customized.
- File format updated to accomodate new feature.
- 1.9c - 2007/11/16
- Fixed the reversed spacing values in the font settings dialog.
- The font generation can now be aborted while the characters are being added to the texture.
- Greatly improved the speed of generating textures.
- 1.9b - 2007/10/28
- Fixed the padding
- Improved documentation
- 1.9a - 2007/09/16
- Allowing unicode for all fonts, even fonts that have only one code page
- Fixed the status messages when generating fonts
- 1.9 - 2007/08/19
- Added support for importing colored icons
- Supported input image formats are: bmp, tga, png, jpg, dds
- Added support for giving a black outline to characters
- Characters with outline may be encoded in 1 channel to save space
- Outline is generated with rounded corners
- Increased the binary file version because there is new information
- 1.8c - 2007/01/25
- Fixed a bug where the font saver got confused with the 4 chnl packed flag set, even though saving in 8bit format
- 1.8b - 2007/01/06
- Fixed kerning amount in binary file format when using super sampling
- 1.8a - 2006/11/23
- Fixed alignment bug with 8bit TGA and DDS files with non-power-of-4 widths
- Fixed crash on Windows with installed Input Method Editors, e.g. Japanese and Chinese Windows
- 1.8 - 2006/11/11
- Added support for binary font descriptor file
- Added support for saving PNG texture files
- The application now remembers the configuration from last execution
- Improved useability for selecting characters in unicode mode
- Added option to select all characters from a text file
- Kerning pairs with amount 0 are no longer output
- XML font descriptor file now groups the pages, chars, and kerning pairs
- The font configuration can be saved to disk, and later reloaded
- Added support for generating fonts via command line using a saved configuration.
- Added support for saving DDS texture files (no compression)
- 1.7a - 2006/09/12
- Fixed the creation of non-unicode fonts
- 1.7 - 2006/09/08
- Added the standard xml header
- Added support for unicode charsets
- Added the option to pack monochrome characters into each of the 4 channels of a 32 bit texture
- Added tag with texture file names in the font descriptor file
- The generation of textures is now done in a background thread
- 1.6 - 2006/02/18
- It's now possible to choose between XML and text for the format of the font descriptor file.
- Fixed kerning sizes with super-sampling
- 1.5 - 2005/10/01
- Implemented stretching so that fonts can now be non-uniformly scaled (only works on Win2K or later).
- 1.4a - 2005/08/26
- Non-TrueType fonts, such as Script and System, are now supported as well.
- Minor fix to rendering when padding is used.
- 1.4 - 2005/07/17
- The preview window now shows the page number in the title.
- Characters without a defined glyph may now be automatically removed (only works on Win2K or later).
- Kerning pairs are now saved as well.
- Added support for chooseable charset, e.g. arabic and hebrew fonts.
- 1.3 - 2005/05/08
- Added support for italic fonts.
- Application no longer crashes when visualizing with no characters selected.
- 1.2 - 2005/03/09
- User can now choose to generate the bitmap font with or without font smoothing.
- Font smoothing is now done without ClearType, so that artifacts are no longer generated in the output texture.
- Added program icon.
- 1.1 - 2005/03/05
- User can now choose to save in 32bit and 8bit TGAs.
- The spacing between characters can now be manually set.
- Fixed the bug where some fonts weren't visible in the font list.
- 1.0a - 2004/11/27
- Fixed a problem with values that where not adjusted to compensate for antialiasing level.
Special thanks to
Work in Progress
Some of the things that will be implemented in future versions:
- Improve packing routine to leave even less unused space of the textures.
- Allow output with fixed height, for easier post edit in graphics programs.
- Improved font generation
- Add support for ClearType as anti-aliasing method again.
- Support for drop shadow.
- Support for blurring.
- Colored glyphs.
- Improve the useability.
- Selecting characters from a file could support a drag-and-drop interface.
- Importing images over characters could also support a drag-and-drop interface.
- Add logfile output for missing glyphs when scanning text files for used characters.
- Add font preview
- Allow user to write text and see the outcome. It should be possible to encode special characters as icons are usually imported over non-visible glyphs
- Improve icon import
- Skip kerning information for imported icons that are overriding font characters.
- Store relative path in the configuration file, so that the project can be moved without having to import all images again.
- Allow importing grayscale images into a single channel, rather than full 32bit.
- Warn if imported icon is larger than output texture.
- Add plugin support for output formats.
- Allow the plugins to format both font descriptor and image files.
- Signed distance fields for improved quality zooming on bitmap fonts.
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