Hi everyone,
Figured I should make my appearance here on discourse...
I'm currently working on a project that requires a pretty extensive particle system that has 3D text labels that are drawn for each particle.  To my surprise there is really no support for this in processing/openGL.  (My colleague successfully implemented the GLUT library but its either 3 Bitmap fonts or 2 Stroke fonts... yuck)  Also wasnt sure about rendering texture maps dynamically because of the whole aliasing issue...

Finally, I took a look at the geomeritive library available in the libraries section.. sweet goodness a ttf processor!  It even has the ability to mesh out the type down to a list of TRIANGLE_STRIPS... awesome.  So now all it takes is to create a displaylist to preprocess all these points into individual characters... to later be called up dynamically.  Obviously theres a bit of overhead when starting up the sketch... but who cares.  This thing allows you to load up any truetype font you please and render it as pure scalable geometry goodness.  (Still have some issues getting the kerning/tracking straight but its getting there...)


Code:

import geomerative.*;
import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
import com.sun.opengl.util.BufferUtil;

int fontList;
pgl.beginGL();
/////BUILD FONT GEOMETRY
  String fontString = " #\"#############0123456789#######ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ######abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
//###'s are placeholders until I get all the right chars in place
  RFont font = new RFont(this, "MTBold.ttf", 72, RFont.CENTER);
  float charSpace = 30.0;  //SPACING OFFSET
  
  fontList = gl.glGenLists(fontString.length());
  for(int i = 0; i < fontString.length(); i++){
    gl.glNewList(fontList + i, GL.GL_COMPILE);
    if(i != 0){//////SPACE CHARACTER
	RMesh character = font.toPolygon(fontString.charAt(i)).toMesh();
	RStrip[] triangleStrips = character.strips;
    
	for(int j = 0; j < triangleStrips.length; j++){
	  gl.glBegin(GL.GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP);
	  RPoint[] pts = triangleStrips[j].getPoints();
	  for(int k = 0; k < pts.length; k++){
	    gl.glVertex2f(pts[k].x, pts[k].y);
	  }
	  gl.glEnd();
	}
	float charOffset = character.getBounds().points[3].x - character.getBounds().points[1].x;////GET CHAR BOUNDS TO ADJUST SPACE
	//println(charOffset);
	gl.glTranslatef(charSpace+(charOffset/3), 0, 0);
	gl.glEndList();
    }
    else{ //////SPACE CHARACTER
	gl.glTranslatef(charSpace+10.0, 0, 0);
	gl.glEndList();
    }
  } 
  
  pgl.endGL();


/////////////////////////DRAW METHOD

ByteBuffer stringBuffer = BufferUtil.newByteBuffer(256);

void drawText(String string, float _scale, color _color, float _alpha) {
  
  gl.glPushMatrix();
  gl.glRotatef(180, 1,0,0);
  gl.glScalef(_scale,-_scale,_scale);
  gl.glScalef(.02, .02, .02);
  gl.glColor4f( red(_color), green(_color), blue(_color), _alpha );
  gl.glListBase(fontList-32);

  if(stringBuffer.capacity() < string.length()) {
    stringBuffer = BufferUtil.newByteBuffer(string.length());
  }

  stringBuffer.clear();
  stringBuffer.put(string.getBytes());
  stringBuffer.flip();
	  
  // Write The Text To The Screen
  gl.glCallLists(string.length(), GL.GL_BYTE, stringBuffer);
  gl.glPopMatrix();
}

 

Have fun,

I'm still pretty much a novice when it comes to openGL... so one question I have is... how would I extrude the characters faces (im guessing its something like... copying the face vertices, offsetting one and running a quadstrip down the extrusion plane...

does this fit you?

http://processing.org/discourse/yabb_beta/YaBB.cgi?board=OpenGL;action=display;num=1213559873

Hello,
Thank you for sharing the code!
I tried implementing it and I got the error; The type RRectangle is not visible with a highlight on this line:

float charOffset=character.getBounds().points[3].x-character.getBounds().points[1].x;

But even if I comment it out no text gets displayed.
I put everything inside draw() and drawText() after it in the main tab.
Can anyone help me?
Thank you!

-edit-
I still have the RRectangle problem, but other than that it finally works.
Thanks again!!

Code:

import peasy.org.apache.commons.math.*;
import peasy.*;
import peasy.org.apache.commons.math.geometry.*;

import geomerative.*;
import org.apache.batik.svggen.font.table.*;
import org.apache.batik.svggen.font.*;
import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
import com.sun.opengl.util.BufferUtil;
import processing.opengl.PGraphicsOpenGL;  
import processing.core.*;
import javax.media.opengl.GL;
import javax.media.opengl.glu.GLU;
import java.util.*;
import java.nio.*;

int fontList;
ByteBuffer stringBuffer;
color c;
PGraphicsOpenGL pgl;
GL gl;
PeasyCam cam;
String fontString;
RFont font;
float charSpace;

void setup(){
  size(300,300,OPENGL);
  RG.init(this);
  fill(255);
  stroke(255);
  stringBuffer = BufferUtil.newByteBuffer(256);
  cam = new PeasyCam(this, 100);
  cam.setMinimumDistance(50);
  cam.setMaximumDistance(500);
  
  /////BUILD FONT GEOMETRY
  fontString = "################0123456789#######ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ######abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
  //###'s are placeholders until I get all the right chars in place
  font = new RFont("AMIENNE_.TTF", 72, RFont.CENTER);
  charSpace = 30.0;  //SPACING OFFSET
  
  pgl = (PGraphicsOpenGL)g;
  gl = pgl.gl;
  
  fontList = gl.glGenLists(fontString.length());
   
  for(int i = 0; i < fontString.length(); i++){
    gl.glNewList(fontList + i, GL.GL_COMPILE);
    if(i != 0){//////SPACE CHARACTER
	RMesh character = font.toPolygon(fontString.charAt(i)).toMesh();
	RStrip[] triangleStrips = character.strips;
    
	for(int j = 0; j < triangleStrips.length; j++){
	  gl.glBegin(GL.GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP);
	  RPoint[] pts = triangleStrips[j].getPoints();
	  for(int k = 0; k < pts.length; k++){
	    gl.glVertex2f(pts[k].x, pts[k].y);
	  }
	  gl.glEnd();
	}
	//float charOffset = character.getBounds().points[3].x - character.getBounds().points[1].x;////GET CHAR BOUNDS TO ADJUST SPACE
	//println(charOffset);
	gl.glTranslatef(charSpace+(10), 0, 0);
	gl.glEndList();
    }
    else{ //////SPACE CHARACTER
	gl.glTranslatef(charSpace+10.0, 0, 0);
	gl.glEndList();
    }
  } 
 // pgl.endGL();
  c = #FFCC00;
}
void draw(){
background(125);

drawText("abcdefg",4,c,0);
}

/////////////////////////DRAW METHOD

void drawText(String string, float _scale, color _color, float _alpha) { 
 
  gl.glPushAttrib(GL.GL_LIST_BIT);
  gl.glPushMatrix();
  //gl.glRotatef(180, 1,0,0);
  //gl.glScalef(_scale,-_scale,_scale);
  //gl.glScalef(.02, .02, .02);
  //gl.glColor4f( red(_color), green(_color), blue(_color), _alpha );
  gl.glListBase(fontList-32);

  if(stringBuffer.capacity() < string.length()) {
    stringBuffer = BufferUtil.newByteBuffer(string.length());
  }

  stringBuffer.clear();
  stringBuffer.put(string.getBytes());
  stringBuffer.flip();
	
  pgl = (PGraphicsOpenGL)g;
  pgl.beginGL();
  // Write The Text To The Screen
  gl.glCallLists(string.length(), GL.GL_BYTE, stringBuffer);
  gl.glPopMatrix();
  gl.glPopAttrib();
   gl.glEnd();
   pgl.endGL();

}