What is a bitmap font?

A bitmap font is a font in which every character is a small picture. Other names for bitmap fonts are image fonts, raster fonts and texture fonts. Bitmap fonts created by Alphabix are full colour, contain transparency info, are unicode and can be up to 1024 pixels high per character.

What is a vector font?

In contrast, a vector font is built out of lines and curves and does not contain colour information.

Convert vector fonts into bitmap fonts

Alphabix can convert any TrueType, OpenType and Type 1 font installed on your system. You can set the character range (which characters you would like to convert), the character set, the size, colour, border size and border colour.

Replace characters by pictures

Any character can be replaced by any PNG, BMP, GIF, TIF or JPG picture. Alpha channels are correctly imported.

Bitmap fonts are full colour

Vector fonts like TrueType (TTF) do not contain any colour information. Bitmap fonts are full colour.

Bitmap fonts are highly detailed

Complex shapes are difficult to vectorize and expensive to render. Bitmap fonts can handle small details much more efficiently.

Bitmap fonts are fast

BluffTitler renders every character of a bitmap font as a single texturemapped rectangle (2 triangles). A vector font, depending on the shape of the character, is built out of hundreds of triangles.

Bitmap fonts are easy to design

If you know how to draw a picture in a paint application you can design your own bitmap font. This is a screenshot of Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Bitmap fonts are always antialiased

Even on older graphics cards that do not feature good quality hardware antialiasing, bitmap fonts are antialiased because the texture file created by Alphabix is perfectly antialiased.

Bitmap fonts do not scale

A disadvantage of bitmap fonts is that they do not scale. The edge of a vector font stays razor sharp, no matter how close you zoom in. However, when zooming in on a bitmap font, the individual pixels become visible.

Export to BluffTitler

Bitmap fonts created by Alphabix can be used by the text and scroller layers of BluffTitler. Press the Select Bitmap Font... button in the font dialog(<F6>) to select a bitmap font.

Export as HTML

Alphabix has been designed for use in BluffTitler, but also offers HTML export. A demo can be found here.

Export as letter cubes cut-outs

Alphabix can create cut-outs for letter cubes. Just enter the names you would like to write and the cut-outs are generated fully automatically. The algorithm has been optimized to write as many names with as little cubes.

Examples

Of course, you are not limited to little green men when creating your own bitmap fonts. To spark your imagination, take a look at the Online Gallery.