It would be amazing if you could create a ttf font in aseprite. Like if each frame you drew a character and then you were able to export the sequence like you would a sprite sheet. If this is already available or is coming in the future let me know.
1 Like
Hi there @neil, it’s not possible at the moment, but several times I thought about adding something like this. Never had the time. There is an issue related to this:
1 Like
Yeah, I made a pixel art font with another software but it only had one size so today I thought how cool it would be if I could even make a few different resolutions of fonts like 16x16 32x32 64x64.
Can this be achieved with scripts? Fonts are such a big topic with so many variables to control that I feel font generation is best left to dedicated tools.
There are also already bitmap font tools like BitFontMaker that can generate fonts from text descriptions (and I even recall one that works from specially formatted images), I feel like scripts/plugins generating input for those would be a better approach. Aseprite doesn’t need to do everything.
Edit: @neil FontForge can be used to create bitmap fonts with multiple sizes.
I understand. It’s just a suggestion. Dacap’s link I think is to a github that I think is working on it although I don’t fully understand what they are doing. I believe they are working on a different file format than ttf. I’m in unity with textmeshpro so I think I need to use ttf. I will slowly figure it out. I just wanted to throw it out there to see if it was a feature others would find beneficial. Can I use the bitmap fonts in unity?
TTFs can include bitmaps, and I’ve used bitmap TTFs in another engine with zero issues, so I’d hope a big engine like Unity can use bitmap TTFs xP
I will try font forge and figure this out when I find time.
If you find FontForge too daunting (it’s a fully-fledged font editor, not just a bitmap one, and the documentation doesn’t cover every aspect of it), you could always create multiple fonts using simpler tools. In terms of game performance, it’s not substantially different to use one font with many sizes or several fonts with one size each.
I’ll try some things out. Do you know any simpler tools?
Can this be achieved with scripts?
Yes, and I would prefer to achieve this with scripts. There are two possibilities:
- all code into Lua
- add support to execute external process that can do the .png → .ttf conversion through the command line
2 Likes
BitFontMaker2 is one I’ve heard of people using. The image-based tool I mentioned earlier is BitFontReader, which generates code you can import into BitFontMaker2 (make sure you read the documentation, as it requires some extra markup in the image). I don’t know whether this one makes true bitmap fonts or outline fonts, as I haven’t used it myself.
There’s also FontStruct, which can make pixel-looking fonts if you only use the basic square to draw your letters, but it exports as an outline (vector) font, so it has somewhat wider compatibility. No way to import stuff drawn in other programs that I’m aware of.
1 Like
thanks again