Font Studio bitmap font generator supports CEGUI

[Nitrogen]

*EDIT: moderators, feel free to move this to the tools forum which I didnt see first time*
Hello the forums!

I've been recently playing around with Ogre3D, and hence CEGUI, and I saw the lack of a nice bitmap font generator for use with CEGUI.

Well, it just so happens that I have a nice bitmap font generator, with a convenient plugin system, so I spent a short while writing a CEGUI exporter for FontStudio my bitmap font generator.

(Apologies in advance for the large images!)

Specifically, This exports the three files needed to describe a bitmap font: .font, .imageset and .png . After trawling the CEGUI messageboards and wikis I managed to get kerning information into the font description, so fonts are rendered as accurately as normal OS fonts would be.

I see that CEGUI already renders out ttf files, so users will probably use Font Studio for the effects it can add to your fonts:




For instance, I rendered out this font with Font Studio:


And heres a screenshot of it running in Ogre3D:



Font Studio can be downloaded from here:
Font Studio Bitmap Font Generator

[scriptkid]

Hi and welcome!

[edit] No worries about the location, but i have moved it to Tools indeed.[/edit]

This looks like a very cool utility to me. The options (drop shadows and such) are really slick

It also shows some cool benefits over using ttf fonts directly, it seems.

[CrazyEddie]

Hey!

Very cool indeed. I think we might make use of this to create some more 'intersting' looking text in some new CEGUI demos.

CE.

[Pompei2]

I really, REALLY appreciate! thanks for sharing!

I tought bitmap fonts are dead, but now I don't think so anymore! I will look into using it in our game Great news, really!

[Nitrogen]

Cool guys!

Hope you can get some joy out of it...

I've been working on my bitmap font generator off and on since 2003, so it's constantly evolving... Just at a very slow pace

Currently I find the effects a tad bit limiting, so the next version will probably revamp the effects completely into something more like what photoshop layer effects give you.

[Nitrogen]

Oh and some general tips for using it:

- If you making straight text with no effects, always choose the SAME text colour and the background colour, so that only the alpha channel describes the outline of the font and not the colour channel as well which can lead to the characters having some of the background bleed through around the edges.

- Drop shadows can be used as glows by changing the background colour.

- For smaller fonts, 12pt and below, play with the antialiasing settings. Some fonts look better using Cleartype and some look better using Smooth antialiasing, you just have to choose the one that looks the best to you.

- Double-clicking on the preview area will allow you to set it's background colour. Useful for checking out how the font will look on bright and dark backgrounds.

[earthsruler]

Really cool dude! I didn't even know we could do that with font files :S.

And here i've been using monochromatic fonts like a sucker!

Thanks for the sweet tool!

[scriptkid]

I didn't even know we could do that with font files.

To give more exposure to this neat tool, i've added a link to the toolset page:
http://www.cegui.org.uk/wiki/index.php/ ... _a_Toolset

[Rincevent]

The website seems to be dead.
Does somebody have a copy of this sotfware that he could mirror?

Thanks,

Rincevent