# My first TTF Rhinestone Font to Share



## katruax (Sep 30, 2010)

So I made my first TTF Rhinestone Font... What a hassle let me tell you!...

But I enjoy a challenge...http://www.pixelcreatorpro.com/Downloads/Rhinestones/ESTArial1.zip

It's a simple single line font Arial about 1" tall using 10ss stones.

I have seen this font for sale elsewhere but there were no numbers and it wasn't in a TTF font... So I made mine in a TTF format with the numbers and the # sign... Caps only though at this point... 

It was modeled after a simple Arial font.

I actually recorded the entire process from the very beginning to the bitter end... About 2 hours but some of that time was learning... I could probably do it in half that time now, now that I know what I'm doing.

I did everything in CorelDRAW and rStones... I think it turned our pretty darn good for my first Font...

Kevin


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## dhearn (Aug 22, 2008)

Would you mind explaining the process? Been wanting to give this a shot myself.


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## Jeff Harrison (Oct 23, 2009)

katruax said:


> It's a simple single line font Arial about 1" tall using 10ss stones.


HI, Another font designer uses same workflow, and found that somewhere along the chain the curvature of the circles goes wonky. _Maybe _it's Draw's TTF export, not sure.

Anyway, watch animation - compare integrity of ttf curve with real circle...

Perhaps zoom in on your font assembly prog and see how it looks at that point.


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## katruax (Sep 30, 2010)

Jeff Harrison said:


> HI, Another font designer uses same workflow, and found that somewhere along the chain the curvature of the circles goes wonky. _Maybe _it's Draw's TTF export, not sure.
> 
> Anyway, watch animation - compare integrity of ttf curve with real circle...
> 
> Perhaps zoom in on your font assembly prog and see how it looks at that point.


You're right about that one Jeff... I noticed that too...

Technically it's not off enough to matter as far as actually using the font for Rhinestone placement as I tested that out... I've purchased several TTF fonts from several suppliers and they all off by what you show... 

That said now that I have the Dizzy Macro from you... It's a moot point... I can have my TTF fonts and perfect circles too!

Kevin


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## allhamps (Mar 15, 2007)

Having the right "ready to use" rhinestone font can be critical to saving design time. I use Font Creator: FontCreator - the most popular font editor!


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## katruax (Sep 30, 2010)

allhamps said:


> Having the right "ready to use" rhinestone font can be critical to saving design time. I use Font Creator: FontCreator - the most popular font editor!


Yup me too!... It's a great program and so simple to use yet very sophisticated...

Kevin


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## katruax (Sep 30, 2010)

Here's a Macro I made up for exporting your Fonts out of CorelDRAW...


So much easier now... I can export a font in about 30 seconds now... VERY sweet indeed...



Sub ExportText2()
 ' Recorded 1/25/2012
 Dim s As Shape, sr As ShapeRange

 Set sr = ActiveSelectionRange

 For Each s In sr.Shapes
 s.CreateSelection
 Dim expopt As StructExportOptions
 Set expopt = CreateStructExportOptions
 expopt.UseColorProfile = True
 Dim expflt As ExportFilter
 Set expflt = ActiveDocument.ExportEx("C:\Users\Kevin Truax\Desktop\Font Template.ttf", cdrTTF, cdrSelection, expopt)
 expflt.Finish
 ActiveSelection.Delete
 Next s
End Sub


Kevin


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## cowpuncher007 (Jul 4, 2008)

I purchased the commercial version of FontCreator yesterday. I'm also getting some distortion in my circles. Sometimes I get the rounded rectangle that was shown, and sometimes just a circle that's "out of true", slightly taller than wide or vice versa. BTW, I use Illustrator for all of my stone work, so I don't think it has anything to do with CD. As also was said, the distortion won't make any difference for making and filling templates, but it's very annoying.


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## cowpuncher007 (Jul 4, 2008)

The distortion comes from having too few anchor points that make the circle. In Illustrator, I bisected the circle and then did it again, adding points to the edge at the intersections. 4X2X2, for a total of sixteen points. This keeps the circle true, or a lot closer in FontCreator. I only use this shape for fonts, as it's overkill for transfer design. I don't know how to do this in Corel, but I'm sure it's similar.


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## katruax (Sep 30, 2010)

Hello Steve,

I use CorelDRAW... What I did was create a Macro that added the extra nodes automatically... My circles are defined by 8 nodes per circle...

I then have a Macro that will take each letter and output as an EPS file. I then import each EPS file into Font Creator... 

This process yields the best looking font in the end... Copying and pasting from CorelDRAW or using the built in CorelDRAW font export function doesn't yeild as clean as a result... Usable... but not as clean...

Kevin


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## cowpuncher007 (Jul 4, 2008)

Exactly! By default, Illustrator creates a PDF with an AI file. With extra anchor points, it comes out great. Same idea. So far, Font Creator is kind of kicking my butt. Deciding what size equals what, etc. Good challenge though. I'd already developed several character sets, which I could then drag a copy of into place. Being able to simply type and cut will be well worth the time invested.


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## cowpuncher007 (Jul 4, 2008)

Sorry, forgot my manners. Hi to you too Kevin. Nice to meet you.


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## hi-nrg-joe (Jul 19, 2008)

katruax said:


> Technically it's not off enough to matter as far as actually using the font for Rhinestone placement as I tested that out...


This is true espescially if you have a rhinestone software that supports replacing with Rhinestones. We first tried this with a dot font. For example, take a look at these fonts
Free Fonts in Dotted Category - Search Free Fonts
...not exactly set up for Rhinestoning, but we found an option in OOBling that's called "replace with rinestones" and allows us to replace the dots with the rhinestone size we wanted. So even if your font isn't a perfect circle, it can be easily replaced with one. I'm sure other software has some type of feature like that. I think Corel even has a find object and replace feature.


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## Laballa1 (Jul 20, 2007)

Hi Kevin,
Could you tell me where I should put the code that you shared above in order to use the macro?

Thanks


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