BluffTitler can render fonts and languages from all around the universe!

In the Change font dialog you set the font of the active layer.

What does this dialog set?

The dialog sets 6 things:

• Font family
• Style
• Character set
• Kerning
• Reading order
• Normalize numerals

How can I display this dialog?

The dialog can be displayed in 3 ways:

• Click on the Change font.. button
• Choose MEDIA > Change font...
• Press <F6>

Make sure the active layer is a text or a scroller layer

All layers checkbox

When the All layers checkbox on the tool window is marked, the font properties of all layers of the same layer type as the active layer are set.

When you hold down the <Ctrl> key when clicking on the OK button, only the fonts properties of the other layers are set that are changed in the active layer.

• Techniques
• Latin, Greek and Cyrillic (LGC)
• Right-to-left (RTL)
• Indian
• Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK)
• Southeast Asia
• Mesoamerican
• Emoji

Font family

BluffTitler supports vector and colour fonts.

Vector fonts

Click on the Select vector font... button or open the font family dropdown to select a vector font.

BluffTitler uses standard TrueType and OpenType fonts that can be downloaded from websites like:

• a2-type.co.uk
• cheapprofonts.com
• dafont.com
• fontpro.com
• fontspace.com
• fontsquirrel.com
• emigre.com
• fontcenter.com
• fontfont.com
• fonts.com
• houseind.com
• klim.co.nz
• lineto.com
• myfonts.com
• smeltery.net
• songwritersfonts.com
• typearture.com
• typography.com
• vllg.com
• youworkforthem.com

After installing a new font, restart BluffTitler to make the new font visible in the dropdown.

Colour fonts

Click on the Select colour font... button to select a colour font. Use the Picture/ExtrudePicture effect to extrude the font.

Colour fonts are BluffTitler specific and can be created and converted from various formats with Alphabix.

This example uses the Playbox font.

Style

Some fonts offer different styles, like Normal, Bold and Italic. Use the style dropdown to select the style.

Professional designers call a font family a type and a particular style a face. For example, "Arial" is a type and "Arial italic" a face. The TrueType file is the "Font".

Character set

Most modern fonts are Unicode. If this does not work, try Default. Avoid all the others.

Kerning

Metric kerning uses the kerning info from the font file. This works best for most fonts.

Optical kerning computes the kerning from the shape of the glyphs.

Reading order

Use Right to left (RTL) for Arabic, Farsi and Hebrew texts. Use Left to right (LTR) for all others.

Normalize numerals

In a well designed font, all number glyphs (0123456789) have the same width. This prevents jumping when animating the numbers. Mark the Normalize numerals checkbox to fix badly designed fonts. Test this by using the time and counter tags.

Ligatures

Some fonts render 2 characters placed right after each other as a single glyph.

In this example of the Pricedown Bl font, the letters A and B are rendered by a special AB glyph.

Swash tails

Some fonts use special characters to create tails.

The Painter font in this example uses the < character for a short tail and > for a long one.

Variants

Some fonts feature more than 1 glyph of the same character.

In this example of the Airways font, the letter t has 2 versions.

Accents

Some characters have accents (diacritical marks). The technical implementation can be very different. In this example, the é is a single glyph with its own Unicode value. The Thai character however is built out of 3 glyphs that are rendered on top of each other by using clever kerning values.

Invisible characters

Not all fonts feature all characters. If a not supported character is entered, BluffTitler does not try to find a replacement font (as Windows does), but instead renders nothing. This prevents shows from looking different on different machines because replacement fonts can be different. To fix invisible characters, choose another font family (try Arial Unicode MS or @Arial Unicode MS) or another character set (try Unicode or Default).

Change glyph

Choose MEDIA > Change glyph... to replace a font glyph by your own vector shape. In the above example, the glyphs of the ( and ) characters have been changed to wings, the * to a star and the _ to a frame ornament.

When the Size is set to 1 and the Vertical position to 0, the shape is scaled and moved to fit between the font descender and ascender lines.

BixPack 37 explores the power of this feature.

Bixelangelo can be used to design your own glyphs.

Dutch

Greek

Macedonian

Arabic

Farsi

Hebrew

Urdu

Hindi

Kannada

Malayalam

Tamil

Telugu

In some fonts the characters are rotated 90°. This can be corrected by setting the Character rotation property of the text layer to (0,0,-90).

Chinese

Japanese

Korean

Khmer

Thai

Vietnamese

Maya

BluffTitler fully supports emoji characters in the text and scroller layers. All skin colours are supported, including alien green!

Emoji font

Emoji characters always use the same font, as set in the SETTINGS > Options... dialog.

The default font is Segoe UI Emoji that comes with Windows. Alternative fonts include Segoe UI Symbol and EmojiOne.

Mix with other fonts

The emoji characters can be mixed with other fonts in the same text layer, but make sure to use the Unicode or Default character set.

Mix with other effects

To make it possible to mix emoji characters with texts that use reflection mapping or other effects, the emoji characters ignore the layer effect unless all characters are emoji characters or if the 1st texture is a colour map.

Emoji size

The size and position of the emoji characters can be set with the Emoji property of the text and scroller layers.

Entering emoji

Entering Emoji characters works best in the MEDIA > Change text... dialog.

Left click on an emoji to add it to your text.

Right click on an emoji to replace it with your own picture.

Other ways to enter emoji include:

• The Windows 10 touch keyboard: right click on the system tray and mark the Show touch keyboard button menu item.
• The Windows 10 emoji picker: press the Windows key and . or ; at the same time.
• Copy pasting them from websites like getemoji.com.

Windows 10

Emoji rendering requires Windows 10.

Emoji 15.1 is supported on Windows 11, 24H2 update.