Writing a Guide to SDF Fonts

redblobgames.com

122 points·chunkles··11 comments

The article in question, https://www.redblobgames.com/articles/sdf-fonts/ is really neat as well, especially the interactive demonstrations

Thanks!

That seems off a little. Here's GPU accelerated vector text, in perspective where as the article claims no

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...

Indeed, but the author left a note:

> there are newer GPU-accelerated font rendering systems that use the vectors. I have not yet explored these.

The one I linked to is older than SDF fonts

Valve originally devised this technique in 2007:

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/2007/SIGGRAPH2007...

I originally had that near the top but in one of the rewrites I moved the papers to the end — https://www.redblobgames.com/articles/sdf-fonts/#appendix

Oh thank-you for the reminder to check Amit's site again! (been following since the BBS and SolarRealms days...)

I’m always pleasantly surprised when I’m reminded that he and his brother made SRE and BRE. I love hearing that folks from those days are still making great things.

Tangential: given the lack of hinting, is it possible to achieve high quality results for small fonts, are there any examples/comparisons to actual fonts (that also can have bad quality hinting, so real comparison to well/poorly hinted fonts would be interesting)?

Are there any games that use SDF for 2D character (player, enemies, objects etc.) rendering?

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