Ttf To Vlw Converter May 2026

A VLW file for 96 ASCII characters at 48px might be ~200KB. The same for 2000 CJK characters could be 20MB. Consider texture compression if memory is tight.

If you have unusual needs (non-Latin scripts, tiny memory footprint), you can write your own converter.

Concept:

Simplified skeleton:

from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont
import struct
ttf_path = "font.ttf"
size = 48
font = ImageFont.truetype(ttf_path, size)
chars = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789"
atlas_width, atlas_height = 512, 512
lv_font_conv --font myfont.ttf --size 24 

--bpp 4 --format vlw 

--range 0x20-0x7F,0x40E-0x4FF 

--output myfont_24.vlw
 ttf to vlw converter

This method gives you absolute control over kerning, compression, and symbol ranges.

A VLW file has (simplified):

| Offset | Type | Description | |--------|------------|---------------------------------| | 0 | uint32 | Magic number: 0x9A33A19F (or 0x9ABC3F4E for old version) | | 4 | int32 | Font size (point size, e.g., 64)| | 8 | int32 | Ascent in pixels | | 12 | int32 | Descent | | 16 | int32 | Leading | | 20 | int32 | Number of glyphs stored | | 24 | uint32[] | Code points array (4 bytes each)| | ... | uint32[] | Glyph indices (matching order) | | ... | uint32[] | Offsets into glyph data block | | ... | uint8[] | Glyph data (each: bounds, advance, contour count, point list) |

Glyph data structure (each):

int32 xMin, yMin, xMax, yMax  (bounding box)
int32 xAdvance                (width for next char)
int16 contourCount            (number of contours)
int16[] contourEndIndices     (last point index of each contour, 0‑based)
int16 totalPoints             (sum of points of all contours)
int16[] pointX
int16[] pointY
byte[]  pointFlags            (1 = curve start, 2 = end of contour, etc.)