Three-glyph NPM

three-glyph

MSDF Bitmap Fonts implementation for three.js.

ES6 adaptation of three-bmfont-text and more..

Context

While creating text in three.js is straightforward, achieving both high fidelity and good performance can prove to be a complex task.

Signed Distance Fields (SDF) are a method of reproducing vector shapes from a texture representation, popularized in this paper by Valve. The integration of signed distance fields into AngelCode BMFont files enables developers to create high-quality bitmap fonts with smooth, scalable outlines in a wide range of applications, offering both performance and visual fidelity benefits.

While SDFs offer efficient and high-quality rendering of simple shapes, Multi-channel Signed Distance Fields (MSDF) extend this capability to capture intricate details and sharp features in complex shapes, making them suitable for a wider range of applications, including text rendering, iconography, and graphic design. To learn more about MSDFs you can read Viktor Chlumský Master's thesis and check out his github.

Demo

Advanced

Getting Started

npm install -S three-glyph

Usage

Basic

Load the font

  import * as THREE from "three";
  import { FontLoader } from 'three/examples/jsm/loaders/FontLoader.js';
  import { Glyph } from "three-glyph";
  
  const manager = new THREE.LoadingManager();
  const fontLoader = new FontLoader(manager);
  const textureLoader = new THREE.TextureLoader(manager);

  const font = null;
  fontLoader.load(
    './Roboto-Regular.json',
    ( raw ) => { font = raw.data }
  );
  const texture = this.textureLoader.load( "./Roboto-Regular.png");
  
  manager.onLoad = function() {
    // Draw glpyhs
  };

Draw glyphs

  const glyph = new Glyph({
    text: 'Hello world',
    font,
    map: texture
  });
  scene.add(glyph);

The class Glyph extends the class Object3D.

Properties

text (required) The text to layout. Newline characters (\n) will cause line breaks.
font (required) The BMFont definition which holds chars, kernings, etc..
map (required) The texture atlas containing our glyphs.
width The desired width of the text box, causes word-wrapping and clipping in "pre" mode. Leave as undefined to remove word-wrapping (default behaviour).
letterSpacing The letter spacing in pixels (default: 0).
lineHeight The line height in pixels (default to font.common.lineHeight).
textAlign The horizontal alignment of each line of text within the overall text bounding box. Can be one of left, right or center.

Roadmap

Basic GlyphGeometry
Fix drawing vertices order
Basic GlyphShader
Basic GlyphMaterial
Basic Glyph (Mesh)
Glyph anchorX and anchorY
How to debug example
Shader "chunkification"
Handles per lines and per character's index
API animation per character
API animation per line
Example with custom map texture (video)
Example with alphaMap per character example with tutorial.
Right-to-left layout
Responsive : html context mirror layout
How to generate a MSDF Bitmap font
Font tweakings process
MTSDF support (it's a real thing), rust doc, rust quoting Chlumsky, article
Documentation
Normal compute fix
LineHeight bug fix
Negate map support
Writing the history of text rendering (resources are welcome at tranremi@live.fr).