How To Create a Bitmap Font with FreeType

An easy C++ solution to create bitmap font textures for OpenGL, DirectX, or Vulkan

A bitmap font created with the Bitmap Font Generator from this tutorial, image by author.

Bitmap fonts are a common way to render text in computer graphic APIs like OpenGL, DirectX, or Vulkan. A bitmap font is a big texture with all ASCII (or more) characters on it. Text can then be rendered by creating a quad for every letter with the correct…