Processing 1.0 - Processing Discourse - Vertext: scalable fast typography!

mflux

Vertext: scalable fast typography!
Dec 1^st, 2007, 1:56pm

Hello all. Posting a new library for the Processors.

http://www.ghost-hack.com/p5/vertext/

It's kind of ALPHA-ALPHA right now, not exactly ready for everybody. Although it does exactly as advertised: fast-rendering vector typography.

Technically, the library records each character as a textMode(SHAPE) drawing into OpenGL display-lists for callback. You can then scale them up to whatever size you want without losing detail but also have it render incredibly fast.

Last tested on Processing 0125 and haven't had time to try the latest versions yet.

Please test and let me know how it works for you!

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lenny

Re: Vertext: scalable fast typography!
Reply #1 - Dec 1^st, 2007, 2:49pm

hello mflux

it runs and it works like a charm.
thanks a lot.
that's what we need.
exactly this stuff.
great.

btw: very cute illustration on the site.

the hack to use display lists for fonts is a great idea.

i tried to set up a camera to rotate around the type.
that works only for the usual font. the vertext does not move or rotate... so it looks like it's only 2d. :(

however i guess it's alpha-alpha.... i hope you follow that one, it's really a great improvement.

www.flickr.com/photos/lennyjpg

JohnG Ex Member	Re: Vertext: scalable fast typography! Reply #2 - Dec 1^st, 2007, 2:56pm You'd need to wrap the text drawing bit of code in a ((PGraphicsOpenGL)g).beginGL();/endGL(); to make rotations etc work.

lenny YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 36	Re: Vertext: scalable fast typography! Reply #3 - Dec 1^st, 2007, 3:04pm yeah, works! ah, this is amazing. wow. thanks JohnG. :)
	www.flickr.com/photos/lennyjpg

mflux

Re: Vertext: scalable fast typography!
Reply #4 - Dec 1^st, 2007, 3:05pm

Oh crap.. thanks for the quick test guys. It's like.. 6AM where I'm at... dunno about you crazy people

Yeah. Display lists only respond to pure gl transform calls and I've been using my own wrapped-P5-wrapped-gl-transform calls for a while now and have totally forgot they do nothing to them. The methods are already in DisplayListManager.java (in my source code) but it requires the user to use those transform calls instead of Processing's!

Crap Sad

I'll scratch my head for a cleaner solution after some sleep. Maybe the library will hijack all the transform calls?

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JohnG Ex Member	Re: Vertext: scalable fast typography! Reply #5 - Dec 1^st, 2007, 3:27pm Your library can do the beginGL()/endGL() calls, since you pass in the PApplet in your P5Extend.register() method. So all you need to do is ((PGraphicsOpenGL)passedPApplet.g).beginGL(); at the start of your text function, and ...g).endGL(); at the end, and it should Just Work™

mflux Senior Member Offline Posts: 388	Re: Vertext: scalable fast typography! Reply #6 - Dec 1^st, 2007, 9:58pm Cool, thanks again JohnG. That's fixed and uploaded now. Scary, though since I had to use my versions of GL transform calls between drawing the typography, but now with beginGL() the display lists will now also listen for transform calls outside the method. Kind of janky but it indeed Just Work™s
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JohnG

Re: Vertext: scalable fast typography!
Reply #7 - Dec 1^st, 2007, 10:34pm

beginGL() takes all the processing side transformations and applies them to the GL side, so after beginGL() everything is as it would be if all the transformations had been GL ones so you don't need to keep track of them in any way or form in your library.

endGL() then returns the GL transforms to processing ones. It's similar to pushMatrix/popMatrix, but it jumps the matrix from processing to/from GL.

davbol

Re: Vertext: scalable fast typography!
Reply #8 - Dec 1^st, 2007, 11:01pm

how does this differ from just using textMode(SHAPE)? specifically, any difference other than using display lists for speed?

sorry if that sounds like i'm questioning it's purpose, (NOT my intent!) just trying to understand exactly what it does. guess what i was hoping for was outlines.

one thing that has annoyed me about text is that you can't draw it ONLY with outline stroke, it HAS to be filled.

what i started doing was grabbing points from the outline - see textCharImplShape() from PGraphicsOpenGL, or Sun has a demo that does the same thing - here's what my version sorta looks like:
http://www.davebollinger.com/works/p5/fontnoise2/
except it actually draws the lines instead of returning the points for the user to do something particle-based with. (and the advantage of having the raw outlines, as opposed to the GLU tesselation polys, is you can now draw them with ANY renderer :)

anyway, just wanted to chime in and mention that code in case you might find a use for it, perhaps including it somehow in your more-polished library (a task i'd probably never get around to doing, and the Geomerative library already does better than mine anyway ;D)

mflux

Re: Vertext: scalable fast typography!
Reply #9 - Jan 5^th, 2008, 1:36pm

Quote:

how does this differ from just using textMode(SHAPE)? specifically, any difference other than using display lists for speed?

sorry if that sounds like i'm questioning it's purpose, (NOT my intent!) just trying to understand exactly what it does. guess what i was hoping for was outlines.

Not at all. There's no difference, besides using display-lists for speed. A project I'm currently working on requires resolution-independent typography so they are required to be vectors. The results I got from textMode(SHAPE) was simply unacceptable, so I wrote this.

Quote:

one thing that has annoyed me about text is that you can't draw it ONLY with outline stroke, it HAS to be filled.

what i started doing was grabbing points from the outline - see textCharImplShape() from PGraphicsOpenGL, or Sun has a demo that does the same thing - here's what my version sorta looks like:
http://www.davebollinger.com/works/p5/fontnoise2/
except it actually draws the lines instead of returning the points for the user to do something particle-based with. (and the advantage of having the raw outlines, as opposed to the GLU tesselation polys, is you can now draw them with ANY renderer

This is great! I think I've also read a similar (same?) technique from ProcessingHacks. If I ever get time I might be able to implement this for Vertext as well.

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