Bitmap Font Loader

Java classes to load bitmap fonts generated by AngelCode Bitmap Font Generator with a simple and minimal API.

Also included are classes to handle 3D rendering in an Android OpenGL app, as well as an example app.

Install

Go to you app's gradle file and edit your dependencies:

dependencies {
    ...
    compile 'it.snada:bitmapfontloader:1.2.0'
}

Simply do a gradle sync and you're ready to code.

Modules

This code contains 2 modules:

• app
• bitmapfontloader

app contains a simple OpenGL app to see the code running. It compiles to an Android app rendering a sample 3D text rotating.

Module bitmapfontloader includes 2 different packages:

• it.snada.bitmap3dstring
• it.snada bitmapfontloader

Packages

bitmapfontloader

This package contains the actual font loader with classes that abstract fonts, chars, and settings.

To load a font, create a font instance, then pass it to the loader together with an InputStream to the font file (not the bitmap texture):

font = new BitmapFont();
//Loads from a xml .fnt file
AngelCodeXmlLoader.load(font, getResources().openRawResource(R.raw.arial_xml));

//Loads from a text .fnt file
AngelCodeTxtLoader.load(font, getResources().openRawResource(R.raw.arial_txt));

//Loads from a binary .fnt file
AngelCodeBinLoader.load(font, getResources().openRawResource(R.raw.arial_bin));

The previous example works with Android resources: if you are outside the Android world, simply pass an InputStream.

bitmap3dstring

This package contains a list of support class to easily perform 3D rendering of 3D strings using textures provided by the program and just 2 triangles.

If you need geometry, get that with the singleton class Bitmap3DGeometry:

geometry = Bitmap3DGeometry.getInstance();

//This object contains geometry, normals and indices information to use in render
geometry.getNormalBuffer();
geometry.getVertexBuffer();
geometry.getIndexBuffer();

Also, if you need vertices color, there's an helper for that too:

//This will create color information (RGBA, within 0 and 1) equal for every vertex on the quad
//There's another constructor to specify information on every single vertex
Bitmap3DColor color = new Bitmap3DColor(1.0f, 0.5f, 0.3f, 1.0f);

Create an instance of a 3D string by passing the BitmapFont and the actual string you want to render.

Bitmap3DString string = new Bitmap3DString(font, "Hello!");

Apply every transformation you desire with provided methods:

// Use this methods to set position, scale and rotation
string.setPositionX(1.0f);

//If you wish to set scale according to given width/height, helper methods are there too
string.setXScaleByPreferredWidth(1.0f);

//...and remember to update other dimensions as well...!
string.setScaleY(string.getScaleX());

If you need, you can cycle to the list of chars inside this 3D string and apply specific transforms.

Now you have everything you need to start rendering:

for (Bitmap3DChar chr : string.get3dChars()) {
  //Every char contains a buffer with UV texture coordinates
  chr.getUvBuffer();

  //Every char contains a model matrix with every transformtaion, also the ones applied at string level
  chr.getModelMatrix();

  //Use this as vertex buffer
  geometry.getVertexBuffer();

  //Use this as index buffer
  geometry.getIndexBuffer();

  //Use this as color buffer
  color.getColorBuffer()
}

Everything will be taken care for you, spacing and kernings included.

Take a look at the Android sample app for more detail.

Contributing

Contributions are more than welcome.

This projects uses git-flow branching model, using Github issue ids as feature names.