[Old] Font Selector - Dynamic font management in 3D view

Hi all blenderheads,

i often do motion design and after effect and blender, and blender’s management of font file had always bothered me, so i tried to implement a better way to manage them, like in after effect for example !

I explain myself : when you do motion design, you often have to chose a font accordingly to the word position and scale in your composition, and so far, i found this impossible to achieve in blender directly in 3D view. Because you have to import your font first through a filebrowser, then assign it and then toggle between your 3 imported font to select the best one.

Font Selector allows you to dynamically visualize available fonts applied to a text object without this painful process of importing a font through filebrowser.

Here’s the Font Selector’s Github :

You can also buy me a cup of coffee to support me if you like the addon :slight_smile:

Install the .py file like any other blender’s addon !


https://media.giphy.com/media/l1J9HQARHICeXOuaY/giphy.gif

Here’s a video walkthrough (sorry about the english accent, not my native language :slight_smile: ):

Here are Font Selector’s features :

  • Font Folders configuration : the addon allows you to setup several font folder on your computer through the addon user preferences. Sudirectories of the font folders will also be scanned for fonts. If you have uninstalled fonts on this computer, you can use them aside installed fonts, just create several font folders. You can save this configuration in an external file, in case you uninstall the addon, and want to keep track of your font folders. The external file is in a simple txt file, stored in a custom folder (by default in config folder of blender, you can change this through user preferences of the addon). This means you can load a previous font folder configuration in one click, in case you uninstalled your addon…
  • Browse dynamically through fonts without leaving the 3D view and with direct visualisation of the font on active text object, like in any other compositing and editing software
  • Refresh operator checks for you all available fonts in your font folders and subdirectories. It may take some time, but the result will be externally stored in your prefs folder. You don’t have to do it again, except if you installed (or add) or uninstalled (or remove) fonts in your font folders
  • Favorites font system : because browsing through hundred of fonts can be painful, you can mark fonts as favorites, these favorites fonts can be easily access by turning on the favorite filter !
  • Export Favorites Fonts : If you have to go work somewhere else and want to bring your favorites fonts with you, go to export (under File in the Info Panel) and export them in a zip file !
  • Remove unused Fonts : To work, the addon has to create an extra vector font datablock (extra font imported) and replace it when you browse from font to font. This leads to an unused datablock at the end of the day. A simple Operator allows you to remove it quickly !
  • Choose the default size of the Font List (number of row) in the addon preferences. If you use only a few favorite fonts, no need for a huge panel !
  • Origin directories and subdirectories of the font are stored, you can display them in the classic list, or toggle with the subdirectory Mode, organising the fonts by these directories !
  • The addon now filtered the corrupted font file out, and store their name in a file in order to not try to import them again ! You can manually add some font to filter through the addon preferences !

Release Notes :

v1.1

  • few bugfixes
  • adds recursive font search. You can now adds a font folder which contains subfolder with fonts in them (linux)

v1.15

  • addition of the row number preference to let the user chose the default (and minimum) size of the Font list
  • mac bug fixed for the specific corrupted default font “NISC18030.ttf”
  • favorites bug fixed : when similar fonts have different filepath in one session, favorites external file was becoming messy
  • dupe font bug fixed : you can now have different font folders containing several times the same font file, this will not create a duplicate anymore in the list
  • Warning icon is now displayed in addon preference when you have several font folders with same folderpath

v1.2

  • filter of the corrupted files and addition of the filtered file, storing the corrupted one to filter them out
  • subdirectories storage and organisation (subdirectory mode)

v1.25

  • fix .psb font, format is now supported by the addon
  • the refresh operator now print in the console some information about its activity
2 Likes

Awesome! thank you. Definitely something like this should be by default in Blender.

Just one thing. Could the addon read fonts folders recursively? In Linux for example user fonts folder is “~/.fonts”, but inside this folder they are alphabetically stored in subfolders “~/.fonts/a”, “~/.fonts/b”, …, “~/.fonts/z”
So it would be nice to be able to just select “~/.fonts” from the addon and it will read all the folders recursively.

Edit:
Thanks for having implemented recursive folder in new version!

Thanks for support !
For recursive research, i didn’t even think about it (more used to windows way of seeing font) but yep, it shouldn’t be too hard to do , i ll see about that !

This should absolutely be the default behavior in Blender. Great add-on!

Hey guys, just uploaded the v1.1 with bugfixes and recursion search (when refreshing the font list, it will search also in subfolders) as it was suggested ! Go to first post to download new version, Enjoy !
C&Cs welcome as usual ! :slight_smile:

Fantastic. Thank you! This really should be part of stock Blender.

Very cool! On Macs, a stock Asian font needs to be disabled for this to work. NISC18030.ttf in Library/Fonts. Error says it’s an unsupported font format. It’s odd, even macOS can’t preview the font file. Other people have run into problems with this font (link1) (link2).


hey blender heads ! thanks m9105826 and saltorio for support ! :slight_smile:

I just put together this little walkthrough video, really sorry about my accent, english is not my native language ! :slight_smile:

Very cool! Small bug on Macs, with an easy fix. Before the add-on will work on a Mac, this stock font needs to be disabled: /Library/Fonts/NISC18030.ttf. It’s an asian font, and seems to be causing problems in other situations as well. Font Selector’s error message says it can’t read that font format.

Hi,
Great addition !

Template list provide a row parameter, allowing to increase the default size of your list.
layout.template_list( rows=25)

thanks stephen_leger :slight_smile: !
yep i know about it but this parameter also defines the minimum number of rows possible, and i think the addon could be used almost exclusively with the favorites fonts, so the extra rows wouldn’t be needed ! but thank for the tip, greatly appreciated :slight_smile:

Very useful, thanks :).

Great addon and way more user friendly than default behavior, one wish thought could you add “search bar” top of the font menu.

Like if I have 100000+ fonts and I want to quicky get tahoma I would search tah… and it would toggle visible only fonts with that parameter.

Thanks. A very nice improvement.

Spitballing: Wonder if the UX principle would be desirable to browse textures, meshes, etc (ordered small to large for testing).

Thanks manolo and fiendish !
And fiendish, there s the ui list default toolbar available, just click on the little + down left to make it visible :slight_smile:

bought… too awesome

thanks for the support and comment, yep it is a possibility, but it could be messy to have this kind of big panel for every object property (texture, data…) Anyway nice thing to think about :slight_smile:

A big thank for buying it ! and for the support :slight_smile:

Hey guys, just posted an update with few “hotfix” ! Someone on BA told me the addon had trouble on mac because of a specific font (which is by default on mac systems, but seems to be problematic for several soft and codes…) So i had to filtered it, the font name is NISC18030.ttf, it’s an asian font i think. Hoping nobody loves this one too much…

I also added the ability to change number of rows in the font list through the addon preference thanks to the stephen_leger remark ! :slight_smile:

get it on gumroad, it’s v1.15

Here’s the release notes of v1.15

-addition of the row number preference to let the user chose the default (and minimum) size of the Font list

-mac bug fixed for the specific corrupted default font “NISC18030.ttf”

-favorites bug fixed : when similar fonts have different filepath in one session, favorites external file was becoming messy

-dupe font bug fixed : you can now have different font folders containing several times the same font file, this will not create a duplicate anymore in the list

-Warning icon is now displayed in addon preference when you have several font folders with same folderpath

Thanks for this usefull thing

A very useful Addon.
Thanks