fontmesh

A fast Rust library for converting TrueType font glyphs to 2D and 3D triangle meshes. Providing a faster, pure rust alternative for ttf2mesh

Quick Start

use fontmesh::Font;

// Load font
let font = Font::from_bytes(include_bytes!("font.ttf"))?;

// Generate a 2D mesh (default: 20 subdivisions per curve)
let mesh_2d = font.glyph_to_mesh_2d('A')?;

// Generate a 3D mesh with custom quality (50 subdivisions per curve)
let mesh_3d = font.glyph_by_char('A')?
    .with_subdivisions(50)
    .to_mesh_3d(5.0)?;

API

fontmesh provides a chainable API that works at different levels of abstraction:

// High-level: One-step mesh generation (uses default: 20 subdivisions)
let mesh = font.glyph_to_mesh_3d('A', 5.0)?;

// Mid-level: Chain operations with custom subdivisions
let mesh = font.glyph_by_char('A')?
    .with_subdivisions(50)
    .to_mesh_3d(5.0)?;

// Low-level: Access intermediate pipeline stages
let glyph = font.glyph_by_char('A')?;
let outline = glyph.linearize()?;  // Uses default subdivisions
let mesh_2d = outline.triangulate()?;
let mesh_3d = mesh_2d.extrude(&outline, 5.0)?;

Performance

fontmesh is 2-3x faster than comparable libraries, with the incredible Lyon.

Run benchmarks yourself: cargo bench --all-features

Examples

# Basic usage
cargo run --example basic

# Chainable API examples
cargo run --example fluent_api

# Export glyphs to OBJ format
cargo run --example export_obj

Pipeline

The mesh generation pipeline consists of the following stages:

1. Font Loading - Parse TrueType fonts with ttf-parser
2. Outline Extraction - Get glyph Bezier curves
3. Linearization - Convert curves to line segments using adaptive subdivision
4. Triangulation - Generate 2D triangle mesh with lyon_tessellation
5. Extrusion - Create 3D mesh with depth and smooth normals

Each stage can be accessed individually, allowing you to:

• Export vector outlines for SVG/PDF rendering
• Reuse 2D meshes for multiple extrusion depths
• Apply custom post-processing (e.g., compute_smooth_normals)
• Implement custom rendering pipelines

License

MIT