Is there any Font Studio 4.2 support?

[chrilley]

Hello,

First I quickly want to say that I really like NGUI, it makes my work so much easier. Keep up the good work!

One thing I was wondering about is there any support now/in the future for Font Studio 4 when creating fonts inside NGUI?
Font Studio is able to export several formats but none were compatible with NGUI it seems.

Font Studio 4 is a free and much better (in my opinion) tool for making bitmap fonts than BMFont. Especially when you need smaller fonts were BMFont just doesn't seem to work at all. At least my attempts have been much less than successful. And I really need a small, thin and sharp font for the project I'm working on.

http://www.jacmoe.dk/uploads/FontStudio420.zip <- Download Link for those who are interested.

[ArenMook]

I'm not familiar with this program. What does it output?

[chrilley]

Similiar to BMFont you get an image and a data file, there's a few formats, one in particular is CEGUI Font that includes an .imageset file that seems to be just an ordinary xml file.

Here's a piece of the beginning for a test font I made...

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<Imageset Name="test font" Imagefile="test font.png" NativeHorzRes="800" NativeVertRes="600" AutoScaled="false">
<Image Name="0032" XPos="0" YPos="0" Width="0" Height="0" XOffset="0"/>
<Image Name="0033" XPos="2" YPos="2" Width="7" Height="15" XOffset="0"/>
<Image Name="0034" XPos="15" YPos="2" Width="8" Height="15" XOffset="0"/>
<Image Name="0035" XPos="28" YPos="2" Width="9" Height="15" XOffset="0" etc... />

There's also one "XNA Format" that also seems to be an XML file;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<font base="13" height="15" >
 <bitmaps>
   <bitmap id="0" name="test font.bmp" size="256x128" />
 </bitmaps>
 <glyphs>
  <glyph ch="!" code="0021" bm="0" origin="2,2" size="7x15" aw="3" lsb="0" />
  <glyph ch="&quot;" code="0022" bm="0" origin="15,2" size="8x15" aw="4" lsb="0" />
  <glyph ch="#" code="0023" bm="0" origin="28,2" size="9x15" aw="5" lsb="0" />
  <glyph ch="$" code="0024" bm="0" origin="41,2" size="9x15" aw="5" lsb="0" />
  <glyph ch="%" code="0025" bm="0" origin="54,2" size="12x15" aw="8" lsb="0" />
  <glyph ch="&amp;" code="0026" bm="0" origin="67,2" size="11x15" aw="6" lsb="0" />
  <glyph ch="&apos;" code="0027" bm="0" origin="80,2" size="6x15" aw="2" lsb="0" />
  <glyph ch="(" code="0028" bm="0" origin="93,2" size="7x15" aw="3" lsb="0" etc... />

And lastly a format just called Font. It exports 1 .fnt file that isn't clear text so I don't know much about that particular one.

It's easy to try out if you have downloaded the program from the link I provided, no installation needed. The program starts up with a basic font ready to be exported; File > Export Font, then pick one of the options.

[PhilipC]

We will have to take a look. But from the outputs you provided they dont exactly line up to what we try and read in terms of a font definition file. Might be doable though

[chrilley]

Thanks for replying! It would be fantastic if it was somehow possible to implement this. I have subscribed to this thread in case there's any update on this.

[ArenMook]

FNT file is what BMFont exports. Rename it to TXT and you can use it in Unity.

[chrilley]

I can't seem to get Font Studio's .fnt files to work with NGUI though, it seems they are similiar with BMFont's .fnt format in file-extension name only. Also to add; When you chose .fnt export in Font Studio you only get a .fnt file but no image. I guess its packed into the .fnt file somehow. The other formats however all generates an image file to go with.

[ArenMook]

Yeah sounds like font studio authors didn't like following established conventions then.

Btw... CEGUI... eww.

[Edy]

And I really need a small, thin and sharp font for the project I'm working on.

Try using these settings at BMFont font settings, "rasterization" section:
- Render from TrueType outline: enabled
- TrueType hinting: enabled
- Font smoothing: enabled
- Super sampling: disabled

See the results at the attached image. A tiny font of 10px is perfectly readable.