Introduction and General Description

A font is typically defined as a set of printable or displayable text characters of a specific style and size. A design of a set of fonts is called typeface. Popular typefaces in use today are the True Type ones used by Microsoft Windows and Adobe’s Type 1 fonts. These two types both belong to the class of scalable or vector fonts, also called outline fonts. Each character of such fonts is described by vector geometry and can be scaled with ease. The curves between the end-points of the vectors are usually specified by using either cubic or linear Bézier spline curves. While the most obvious relevance of text characters is for printing and publications, other applications such as computer animation and computer-aided design also require text manipulation functions. The vast majority of text based applications allow the placement of letters using rigid motion only. The few exceptions, such as the Microsoft “WordArt” technology, permit non rigid manipulation of text, yet only to a limited extent and with inferior quality, compared to the preliminary results of this research effort.

Here are a few examples from the Microsoft TextArt tools:

Looking at the TextArt example above, we see that in the text on the left, “Test number 1,” all the characters are the same size and are not bent to follow the circular shape of the base curve, the curve that sets the layout path of all characters. In other words, when using the existing WordArt technology, in many cases the characters will remain rigid and are only positioned to follow a certain freeform path. In the middle text, “Test number 2,” most characters intersect their neighbors. In the text on the right, “Test number 3,” a similar phenomenon occurs. The letters 'u' and 'm' overlap at one point while a large gap remains at the point of high curvature on a freeform path.

Compare these results with those of our new SculpTexturer technology. “Text Number 1” bends nicely around the circular base curve. Note, for example, the letter 'N' in figure below. The semi-circle in the middle of the figure below is also handled gracefully even when a very complex font is employed. The high curvature region in the figure on the right is smoothly and continuously handled, and is free from intersections:

SculpTexturer provides lay users with the following advanced abilities (note that the user does not need to be a trained graphic artist or a computer scientist):