Hello all.

I was rendering a title sequence for a short 'documentary', and found
that accented characters seem to locate different than normal ones. For

position in 'Cordoba'.

I first thought the font might be problematic, but rendering the same
text in the GIMP, using the same font file, gives a correct result. I
tried with different kerning settings there (in GIMP) and the result was
always ok.

Does POVray use a proper kerning algorithm, which might be trown off by
accents?

John

PS: The font is DejaVuSans.ttf,
http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

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John Coppens <joh### [at] johncoppenscom> wrote:
> Hello all.
>
> I was rendering a title sequence for a short 'documentary', and found
> that accented characters seem to locate different than normal ones. For

> position in 'Cordoba'.
>
> I first thought the font might be problematic, but rendering the same
> text in the GIMP, using the same font file, gives a correct result. I
> tried with different kerning settings there (in GIMP) and the result was
> always ok.
>
> Does POVray use a proper kerning algorithm, which might be trown off by
> accents?
>
> John
>
> PS: The font is DejaVuSans.ttf,
> http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

While I haven't experienced that exact problem, I have noticed POV doing odd
things with some fonts. I *think* it only occurs with poorly-designed TrueType
fonts; fonts that were derived from PostScript fonts seem to behave properly.

My workaround is to render the text in another program & use it in POV as a
heightfield. In fact, I find this often looks better than doing text extrusion
in POV, even with well-behaved fonts. Also, you have more control over the
extrusion process with this method.


IIRC, with POV-Ray version 3.6 there is a slight change in the way the program
handles text, and it generally looks better than it did in earlier versions. I
don't know if further improvements have been made for 3.7.

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On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:00:30 EST
"PM 2Ring" <nomail@nomail> wrote:

> My workaround is to render the text in another program & use it in POV
> as a heightfield. In fact, I find this often looks better than doing
> text extrusion in POV, even with well-behaved fonts. Also, you have
> more control over the extrusion process with this method.

Yes, I've done this before. But the quality of the font rendering by
itself is really good now. To obtain a comparably good title strip, I'd
probably have to generate an huge image (it's a long text ;)

The DejaVu font project is quite serious, and the fonts produced are
excellent (and cover many languages). I'd be surprised if the accented
character problem originates in the font itself.

BTW, a first pass finished (after 4 hours of rendering) shows that the


http://imagebin.org/73303
http://imagebin.org/73304

John

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John Coppens <joh### [at] johncoppenscom> wrote:
> http://imagebin.org/73303
> http://imagebin.org/73304

hmm, I was expecting to see 3D fonts, not an orthographic projection that looks
just like what you get in a regular 2D bitmap editor, plus a scaled drop-shadow
layer of sorts and a background layer.  Gimp also doesn't demand 4 hours and, as
you said, kerning is just fine. :)

I mean:
http://i47.tinypic.com/59y04p.jpg

that's a mere 10 minutes gimping...

if it's supposed to be 3D, than it better be 3D:
http://i48.tinypic.com/o8cdhu.jpg

:)

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On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:48:58 EST
"nemesis" <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

> hmm, I was expecting to see 3D fonts, not an orthographic projection
> that looks just like what you get in a regular 2D bitmap editor, plus a
> scaled drop-shadow layer of sorts and a background layer.  Gimp also
> doesn't demand 4 hours and, as you said, kerning is just fine. :)
> 
> I mean:
> http://i47.tinypic.com/59y04p.jpg
> 
> that's a mere 10 minutes gimping...

I'm sorry. Each frame takes only about 4-5 seconds, but there are 2500
different frames to render. The characters I took from the screenshot are
the parte where the camera is just in front of the characters, so you
can't see the 3D effect. I did that in order not to confuse the viewer.

This still doesn't solve the problem of the kerning.

John

Post a reply to this message

John Coppens <joh### [at] johncoppenscom> wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:48:58 EST
> "nemesis" <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>
> > hmm, I was expecting to see 3D fonts, not an orthographic projection
> > that looks just like what you get in a regular 2D bitmap editor, plus a
> > scaled drop-shadow layer of sorts and a background layer.  Gimp also
> > doesn't demand 4 hours and, as you said, kerning is just fine. :)
> >
> > I mean:
> > http://i47.tinypic.com/59y04p.jpg
> >
> > that's a mere 10 minutes gimping...
>
> I'm sorry. Each frame takes only about 4-5 seconds, but there are 2500
> different frames to render. The characters I took from the screenshot are
> the parte where the camera is just in front of the characters, so you
> can't see the 3D effect. I did that in order not to confuse the viewer.

oh.  I've been PWNED! :P

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