Overview
bmGlyph (bitmap glyph) – Create nice bitmaps from your fonts. bmGlyph is a bitmap font generator which allow you to create nice rendered fonts and use it in your game or application. Stop wasting your time designing yourself your text or creating multilangages version of the same button: start using bmGlyph!
Special Effects
Cast Shadow, stroke with desired color/gradient and width, fill the glyph: color, glossy, gradient, or even import your own texture !
Customize
Import your own true type font, and work on selected glyphs allows you to change the color or texture of each glyph.
Publish
New publish setting sheet with multiple and customizable tragets. Advanced the preview mode with offset adjustments. Export your PNG and FNT file. Compatible with Cocos2d, Corona, Sparrow and unity (ezgui, ngui, … plugins)
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Main Features
Select fonts from your system or import any true type font.- Cast Shadow
- Stroke with desired color/gradient and width
- Choose how to fill the glyph: color, glossy, gradient, or even import your own texture.
- Work on selected glyphs only allows you to change the color or texture of each glyph.
- Kernings support
- Preview mode: see how it render on an iPad, iPhone 4 or iPhone 3, or import your own background.
- Auto SD: generate automatically SD and HD textures.
- AutoSize: finds the best texture size automatically.
- Export the preview text as a PNG
- Bounding box adjustement (allows easier external editing)
- Complete predefined charset list for any language
Once published, the bitmap and font file coordinates can be used with the most famous game framework: cocos2d, corona, unity, etc…
The default atlas format is the one used by angel code BMFont.
Stop wasting your time designing yourself your text or creating multilangages version of the same button: start using bmGlyph !
61 Responses to “Overview”
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Corona SDK
This app is fantastic! This was the missing piece to getting started with Starling and now I have all the tools I need. I also know it’s good because I was able to create a great looking font in 15 minutes … and I am a developer with no design abilities
Thank you!
How do I use this to work on a font in Photoshop and then send it out to .fnt for one of these engines? I’m a designer…
and to Jack above, if you’re a developer with no design abilities, how do you know it looks great?
I kid. I kid. Of course you do. Or maybe your’e being subjective… I kid.
You need first to create a basic project in bmGlyph, with no effect if you want to customize it yourself in photoshop.
Choose the desired font size and a plain color only, increase the bounding box (if you add shadows etc…), and publish it.
you will have your .fnt and you can do your job in photoshop …
Hello~!
I want to know if this software supports Chinese fonts?
Hi, it is supposed to. You can download and play with the demo version to see the result
Hello,
tools like BMFont let me create bitmap fonts in Bold or Italics even if the font itself comes in Regular only, while bmGlyph doesn’t seem to support this. Any chance this might be added in the future?
i guess it depends on the font you use. currently the selector needs more work to display only the available options for each font. try with Arial and italic , it should work.
bmglyph will now display the full list available for each font, for the v1.6 (just submitted for review)
Hello, I am vishwas , I want to know more about Bitmap font generator,and how to get .sfp files
hi, i don t know what is .sfp file… please tell me more about it. what is it for, how to use it. thanks
I’v bought the software,and use the font in cocos2d,work fine !
I also use Unity,how can I use the font in Unity ?
thanks.
Hello, yes it works with unity too. I haven’t tested fist myself but a lot of people are using it. I would suggest to go on the unity forum and search for bitmap fonts . Plugins like ezgui can do the work but also other plugins are available .
as you said,I need some plug-ins to use the fonts ?
Yes, On this forum http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/118391-bmGlyph-a-bitmap-font-generator
They use ezgui or Ngui .
Hi,
Wondering why is there always a small empty area at the lower right corner of the texture?… Also, is it possible to adjust the bounding box for each character so that they are mono-spacing? An example of such texture: http://read.pudn.com/downloads32/sourcecode/java/applet/game/103198/Lesson17/Data/Font__.jpg
Bounding box doesn’t work for me for some reason. It does nothing no matter what value I put in it…
If you select all the letters, a red square should appear around each letter and changing the bounding box value should increase the box size around the letter , also please check that you have the latest version
Hello, BMGlyph is a fantastic software, and much more stable than other solution.
Is there any plan to port it into Windows, i’m sure there are many customers on windows side, because nice bmfont generator is so rare in Win
Hi
Yes i’m thinking about it. I’m currently looking for frameworks which could
Allow me to use part of bmglyph objective c/cocoa source code
Hello,
I bought the app already, It look nice but when i save as the font, I got the file named “name.bmglyph”.
How can I save with “name.fnt” then I can use in cocos2D?
Thanks
(answer sent by email, but for the ones who read this, the .bmglyph is when you save a project, and for cocos2d
or any other frameworks, you need to ‘Publish’ the project, which will generate the .png and .fnt files)
I would like to know if this application can export the different characters as single images. I mean a set of images one for the space, other for !, other for 1, etc…
Thanks in advance.
No it only generate texture files and font atlas.
If you need to manipulate each letters, for exemple in cocos2d, you should be able to access each letter of a sprite which is supposed to
be a CCSprite (not 100% sure about that, but it should work like that, that should allow you to do text effects when appearing etc … ).
Does bmGlyph support libgdx? If you don’t know I can test it if you give me example files(png and fnt)
please send me an email and i’ll send you test files.
reading this: http://code.google.com/p/libgdx-users/wiki/addingText2D , it uses a test file generated with hiero, bmGlyph will work too as it is the same format.
Unusable after the update. Too complicated and has bugs.
hi,
can you be more specific please ?
what bugs did you found, what is too complicated and how would you love to see it improved.
and about unstability, does it means the app crashes (are you able to reproduce it ? ).
thanks in advance.
Great app.I just bought it from mac app store. It saved me a lot of time for making .fnt fonts.
But I think publish path is better if you use relative path instead of absolute path.
We have a source control on git, and there may be people who change the bmGlyph project on different terminals. It just saved my Users/xxxx/ name and it has to be changed for others.
I think it will make your app more flexible and easy to use. Looking forward an update for the path modification =)
yes it is actually on the todo list since a long time, i will try to include that in the next update.
1.9.2 is out with some fixes, and i will probably release a 1.9.3 soon, there is still a bug with the ‘save as’ function.
Hi Lezard,
After the update I can’t publish my fonts anymore
previous version worked (the one without the new publish window) I get this warning no matter what I do.
Incomplete targets, please check all the targets and fill the Directory Path & File Name
Cheers,
Roy
hi Roy,
please contact me on my email, we will sort that out.
if you can also send me a screenshot of your publish setting ?
thanks in advance
Thanks to the great support it is working for me again in 45 minutes!
5 Stars for the support!
thanks
for everyone if it can help:
all the targets listed in the targets list will be published. if there is a warning message, you have to check all of them.
Hi, I just purchased bmglyph, and I seem to be having the same problem described above. I can’t get it to publish. The message is “Please check all targets suffixes (ex: empty, -ipad, -ipadhd, -hd, @4x, @2x …”
I am not even certain what that means. I have entered every combination of suffixes I can think of in the “Suffix” box, but nothing makes it happy. Does it matter that I am running Mountain Lion 10.8.2? Thank you.
Hi,
You have to check all the targets you have configured , by clicking each one in the target list. The first one is the ‘default’ , if you have a second target in the list , you then need to be sure that the suffixes for the 2 targets are correct .
If you can’t make it work, don’t hesitate to send me screenshots on my email .
I have the same error warning as Roy and Glenn Parker
I dont know what the target settings messages mean. I want this for Unity Ngui
and I also I do not understand what you mean (lezard says:
December 22, 2012 at 6:48 am)
bmfont was not so complicated for me
Thank you!
Hey, I’m sorry guys, but the new publish settings window is a total disaster. I’m surprised to see such an awful piece of development and design in an otherwise very well put together program.
I don’t generally get online and complain about this kind of stuff, but this needs fixing asap. It’s like a caricature of anti-user friendly program development.
Hi,
it is planned to re-add a simple publish settings, like it was before. the current one will be a ‘advanced’ option, since it allows a full configuration (directories, suffixes, scales … etc for each target).
if you have a better idea, feel free to offer something. i’m currently working on the next version.
thanks for your comment
Ok I now understood. Just after I’ve been writing the message here
Nice Too! btw
Can you publish a trial version? I want to try before I buy please.
There is a demo version un the download section, however you can’t publish the font . I can provide you some sample files if you want
Hi,
I’ve got an error like following :
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception ‘NSInternalInconsistencyException’, reason: ‘FontDefinition could not be found!’
After debugging, I found out that it caused by “space” character which exists in my string.
I was trying to display a string of “Black Bowl”. So I go ahead and include space in the fnt, but I still get the same error.
What’s the workaround for my case? Pls help, thanks.
Check that you have the space letter in the bmglyph letters box .you can erase all letters and click on basic Latin for exemple
Have tried it, and still the same error. Is the char id in fnt file actually a ASCII code?
I can’t seem to find code 32 there.
If the char Id 32 is not in the fnt file, it means it is not in the letter box. Expect if there is a bug … Could you send me on my email your .bmglyh project and I will check the export ?
I have same issue space character makes my app crash with the error
“FontDefinition could not be found!”
as you said I added a space char. and it worked! thanks
how do u add a “space” char there? I tried adding one in the letterbox but nothing changed.
that should work… if you publish, can you look in the .fnt file, and see if there is the char id 32 (space).
if you are using the standard latin1, you can also hit the refresh button, click on latin1, the space will be added automatically.
also i’ve fixe that problem in the coming update, the space will be automatically added ,you won’t have to worry about it anymore.
edit: actually the new update has been approved today
Hi,
I’m wondering if is possible to edit the font in the illustrator before, and then, create fnt with bmGlyph. Is it possible?
Thanks!
hi,
no, you need first to create the png and fnt file with bmGlyph, then you can edit the texture with photoshop or illustrator to modify it, keeping the letters at the same position.
just create letters with a single color, then edit the png… if you need extra space for shadows around the letters, increase the bounding box before in bmGlyph
Hi Author, I have just bought your app. Nice touch you have there for unity as I won’t need to change the file to .txt myself. cool.
Hello,
Just purchased your app. Great job indeed. But I’m unable to select non-latin characters with magic wand which is major drawback of this feature. Do you plan to fix this?
Hello,
thanks for your message.
i will make some tests and of course fixe that for the next update. thanks for reporting!
Stéphane.
I’ve added new letter and when exporting it has 0 xadvance value.
char id=1365 x=41 y=282 width=39 height=45 xoffset=0 yoffset=0 xadvance=37 page=0 chnl=0
char id=1413 x=82 y=282 width=39 height=45 xoffset=0 yoffset=0 xadvance=32 page=0 chnl=0
char id=1366 x=123 y=282 width=39 height=45 xoffset=0 yoffset=0 xadvance=39 page=0 chnl=0
char id=1414 x=164 y=282 width=39 height=45 xoffset=0 yoffset=0 xadvance=38 page=0 chnl=0
char id=1415 x=205 y=282 width=39 height=45 xoffset=0 yoffset=0 xadvance=0 page=0 chnl=0
See the last item. I don’t know how to calculate correct value manually.
hello,
can you send me on my email the .bmglyph, so i can see / debug the problem. thanks in advance
Stéphane.
After closing/reopening document, now all xadvance values are 0. I’m not sure if my document will help me, but I think it’s better if I give you the steps to reproduce the issue on your own, because the problem imho is not in document but in SW.
having a .bmglyph always help. it’s faster to have your exact configuration and be sure we don’t forget a parameter somewhere
OK. I’ve reproduced scenario. File is sent.
On that file just add single glyph with code A8 (for that you need to add A8-A9 then delete the last one and then publish. You will see that newly added glyph has zero xadvance.
also confirming that after closing/reopening document xadvance value is zero for all glyphs.
- Shadow opacity sometimes there and sometimes not. Even when it’s there, opacity change doesn’t affect glyph in editor
- Unable to add single glyph when specifying same hex code in editor
- .bmglyph doesn’t save custom TTF font so every time I have to specify it again after opening document
- There is no way to center glyph in bounding box. It’s always left aligned.