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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Font to 3D?

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WLGfx
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Location: NW United Kingdom
Posted: 12th Oct 2011 02:34
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It is easy enough to create a texture of a text string by creating a bitmap size of text width and text height and grab the image. That image then can be used to represent a 3D font.

What I'm looking for if anyone knows is how to convert a glyph (single font character) to a 3D object.

Actually, even just converting it to a 2D polygon would be a great start. Or where on the web I would find the info to do this.

I've already got code that will outline bitmaps and triangulate polygons. But I'm sure there is a way of just grabbing the polygon data and re-sizing it just as http://coding.scribd.com/2010/06/24/repolygonizing-fonts/ shows it.

The idea is basically to convert a 2D polygon to a 3D extruded object, just like any 3D package does but also with fonts.

Any pointers, directions, would be appreciated. This is another awkward situation I'm putting myself into...

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CumQuaT
AGK Master
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Joined: 28th Apr 2010
Location: Tasmania, Australia
Posted: 12th Oct 2011 03:29 Edited at: 12th Oct 2011 03:30
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Most 3D packages can turn text into 3D extrusions. I personally use 3ds max to do it. As for doing it within DBP, I'm not sure it's possible.

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WLGfx
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Posted: 12th Oct 2011 03:39 Edited at: 12th Oct 2011 03:45
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It is just turning a .ttf glyph back into its basic polygon tree list form, a 2d polygon list. ie the letter 'O' would have 1 polygon list, 2 polygons, outline and an inline polygon. I'd like to get 'through' that bit and then triangulate and convert into 3D.

EDIT: I want to do it this way instead of storing a large list of meshes. I'm working on procedural content. Smaller size, but generated stuff.

EDIT2: I'm also working with MSVC++ so I 'can' manually load a font. This forum gets the most attention so I asked here first...

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Brendy boy
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Posted: 12th Oct 2011 06:48
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cloggy's 3d func plugin has the command for creating such 3d objects

BBB GUI Plugin
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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 12th Oct 2011 11:56
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This works great...

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=69221&b=5

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WLGfx
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Posted: 12th Oct 2011 16:36
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I had a look at that but although it's faster than normal text commands it doesn't actually convert the font into a 3D object. As I said in my first post, it's easy to create a texture out of text and use that for 3D objects but using the actual polygon data from the glyphs of a font and making a 3D object that way seems at the moment impossible.

Today, a bit more googling then probably give up on this idea. Apart from that I could generate a bitmap, trace the outlines and then triangulate.

There's a couple of decent utilities out there that does that. "potrace" can trace outlines of images, and "triangle" does a fantastic job very fast of triangulating polygons. I might just implement these into a plugin for DBP.

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 12th Oct 2011 16:37 Edited at: 12th Oct 2011 16:41
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Well D3D allows you to make a mesh, and save the text as a 3D object so can't you use the make mesh command?


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chafari
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Location: Canary Islands
Posted: 12th Oct 2011 16:43
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Yes, as Pincho Paxton said, you can save text as 3D object and you can give texture to it:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=189447&b=1


Cheers.

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WLGfx
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Posted: 12th Oct 2011 16:57
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Oh... (cleans glasses and re-reads)

I didn't see that. Now that is mega useful and I don't have to mess about doing it myself...

Jumps for joy!!!

Thanks guys...

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Mobiius
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Posted: 13th Oct 2011 01:13
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Hey! It's my thread! lol

My signature is NOT a moderator plaything! Stop changing it!
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