3d Text by Extruding BitmapData Snapshots of Text
Putting together a number of previous blog posts, here’s the current state of my 3d text. In terms of speed and quality, it’s a big improvement on the examples I was showing at FITC in Amsterdam, old example here.
So, the process is (links to blog posts with explanations and source code):
- Create text, grab a bitmap data snapshot of it.
- Extract Positive and Negative shapes from the BitmapData.
- Extract the Shape Outline Points from the Positive and Negative Shapes.
- Analyze and Optimize the Shape Outline Points into a Vector Shape.
- Extrude the Points using the FP10 Drawing API.
Here’s some screen shots, click images for the demo :
The colors are random, use the widgets to choose a font, the text size and depth of the extrude.
On my machine the framerate is pretty steady in the 20′s even with longer strings. The text box on the right displays the duration of the entire process described above.
Download the source (I know, the project has the same name as the last 3, because it is, I’ve just added a bunch more code to it). Parts of it I’m quite happy with, others less so, but you know, there’s always room for improvement 
Tags: 3d, AS3, bitmapdata, extrude, Flash, flashplayer10, fp10, texteffect
May 6th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Great posts
That is something I was trying to do some time ago. I din’t know much about the extrude shape algorithms. Now I know a lot more thanks to You. Very inspiring.
Keep it up.