aframe-troika-text

This package provides an A-Frame component and primitive for rendering three-dimensional text using Troika's text renderer.

It has similar performance and quality to A-Frame's built-in SDF text component, but brings some additional advantages:

• It reads font files directly (ttf, otf, woff) and does not require using an external tool to pre-generate SDF textures with the glyphs you think you'll need.

• It supports ligatures so you can use fonts like Material Icons.

• Rather than using a fully custom shader, it patches the built-in Three.js material shaders as needed, so you don't lose all the nice standard shader features like lighting and fog.

• Support for right-to-left/bidirectional language layout and shaping of Arabic text.

API

This package registers both a component (<a-entity troika-text="value:Hello" />) and a primitive (<a-troika-text value="Hello"></a-troika-text>). Use whichever is most convenient for you.

I've attempted to keep the API as close as possible to that of A-Frame's default text component and a-text primitive, however some things don't quite map exactly.

Property on component	Attribute on primitive	Description	Default Value
align	align	Multi-line text alignment (left, center, right, justify).	left
anchor	anchor	Horizontal positioning (left, center, right, align).	center
baseline	baseline	Vertical positioning (top, center, bottom).	center
clipRect	clip-rect	Four comma- or space-separated numbers defining a rectangle (minX, minY, maxX, maxY) outside which pixels will be hidden.	no clipping
curveRadius	curve-radius	A cylindrical radius along which the text's plane will be curved. Positive = concave, negative = convex.	0
color	color	Text color. This is a shortcut for specifying a custom material.	white
depthOffset	depth-offset	Depth buffer offset to help prevent z-fighting. Negative numbers are closer to camera, positives further.	0
direction	direction	Main bidi direction of the text: 'auto', 'ltr', or 'rtl'	'auto'
fillOpacity	fill-opacity	Opacity of the glyph's fill.	1
font	font	URL to a font file - can be a .ttf, .otf, or .woff (no .woff2) or an <a-asset-item> id such as #font.	Roboto loaded from Google Fonts
fontSize	font-size	Em-height at which to render the font, in meters.	0.2
letterSpacing	letter-spacing	Letter spacing in meters.	0
lineHeight	line-height	Line height as a multiple of the fontSize.	derived from font metrics
maxWidth	max-width	Maximum width of the text block at which text will start wrapping, in meters.	Infinity (no wrapping)
outlineBlur	outline-blur	A blur radius applied to the outer edge of the text's outlineWidth.	0
outlineColor	outline-color	Color of an outline drawn around the glyph paths.	black
outlineOffsetX	outline-offset-x	Horizontal offset of the outline (ala text-shadow), as a number in meters or a percentage of the font-size.	0
outlineOffsetY	outline-offset-y	Vertical offset of the outline (ala text-shadow), as a number in meters or a percentage of the font-size.	0
outlineOpacity	outline-opacity	Opacity of the outline, from 0 to 1.	1
outlineWidth	outline-width	Width of an outline drawn around the glyph paths, as a number in meters or a percentage of the font-size.	0
overflowWrap	overflow-wrap	Controls how text wraps: "normal" to break at whitespace characters, or "break-word" to break within words.	normal
value	value	The actual content of the text. Line breaks and tabs are supported with \n and \t.	''
strokeColor	stroke-color	Color of a stroke drawn inside the glyph paths.	grey
strokeOpacity	stroke-opacity	Opacity of the stroke, from 0 to 1.	1
strokeWidth	stroke-width	Width of a stroke drawn inside the glyph paths, as a number in meters or a percentage of the font-size.	0
textIndent	text-indent	Width of an indentation space to be added before the first character of a line.	0
whiteSpace	white-space	How whitespace should be handled (i.e., normal, nowrap).	normal (behaves like pre-wrap)

Note: It does not currently follow how the built-in text component interacts with a geometry component for auto-sizing and anchoring. I think that's a nice feature so it's probably worth adding; in the meantime just use the maxWidth and anchor/baseline attributes to control it manually.

Changing the material

By default the text will render using a MeshBasicMaterial using the color property described in the table above. But you can also change the material to gain more advanced shader features such as physically-based lighting.

If you are using the <a-troika-text> primitive, you can assign it a material component just as you would any other entity.

<a-troika-text
  value="Hello!"
  material="shader: standard; metalness: 0.8;"
></a-troika-text>

If you are using the troika-text="..." component, you must instead give it a troika-text-material="..." attribute to distinguish the text material from the entity's main material. You can pass it anything supported by the built in material component.

<a-entity
  troika-text="value: Hello!"
  troika-text-material="shader: standard; metalness: 0.8;"
></a-entity>

Installation

Browser

Install and use by directly including the browser files:

<head>
  <title>My A-Frame Scene</title>
  <script src="https://aframe.io/releases/1.3.0/aframe.min.js"></script>
  <script src="https://unpkg.com/aframe-troika-text/dist/aframe-troika-text.min.js"></script>
</head>

<body>
  <a-scene>
    <!-- As a component: -->
    <a-entity troika-text="value: Hello world!"></a-entity>
    
    <!-- As a primitive: -->
    <a-troika-text value="Hello world!"></a-troika-text>
  </a-scene>
</body>

npm

Install via npm:

npm install aframe-troika-text

Then require and use.

require('aframe');
require('aframe-troika-text');