T42 to MTV Converter

Render Type 42 font specimens as MTV raytracer images online

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Raytracing Ready

MTV format feeds directly into raytracing pipelines — convert T42 font glyphs into texture images for 3D rendering and scene composition.

No Software Required

Run the entire T42 to MTV conversion online. No raytracer or image tools needed — just upload and download in your browser.

Files Auto-Delete

Uploaded T42 fonts are removed immediately. MTV outputs are purged from our servers within 24 hours.

How to convert T42 to MTV

1

Select files from Computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, URL or by dragging it on the page.

2

Choose mtv or any other format you need as a result (more than 200 formats supported)

3

Let the file convert and you can download your mtv file right afterwards

About formats

T42 (Type 42) is a PostScript font format developed by Adobe Systems that wraps a TrueType font inside a PostScript font dictionary, enabling PostScript printers equipped with a TrueType rasterizer to print TrueType fonts natively. The name reportedly references Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," where 42 is the answer to the ultimate question. Type 42 was introduced with PostScript interpreter version 2013 in the mid-1990s, with Adobe publishing the formal specification as Technical Note #5012 in July 1998. The format embeds the complete TrueType font data — outlines, hinting instructions, and tables — as a binary string within the PostScript sfnts dictionary entry, while wrapping it in standard PostScript font structure including CharStrings, Encoding, and FontInfo dictionaries. One advantage is preserved TrueType hinting: because the original quadratic spline outlines and grid-fitting instructions are passed directly to the TrueType rasterizer, the printed output matches the screen rendering quality that TrueType hinting was designed to deliver. This is superior to the alternative approach of converting TrueType outlines to Type 1 cubics, which discards hinting. Type 42 also enables PostScript workflows to incorporate the vast library of TrueType fonts bundled with Windows and macOS without manual font conversion. PDF generators commonly use Type 42 embedding when including TrueType fonts in PostScript-based output pipelines. The format bridges two major font technologies that evolved separately, ensuring interoperability across the PostScript and TrueType ecosystems.
Developer: Adobe Systems
Initial release: 1995
MTV is a simple raster image format created by Mark T. VandeWettering for the MTV Ray Tracer, a ray tracing program released in 1988 as one of the early publicly available ray tracers distributed through Usenet. The format stores 24-bit RGB images with a minimal text header followed by raw pixel data. The header consists of a single line containing the image width and height as ASCII integers, followed immediately by the pixel data where each pixel occupies three bytes (red, green, blue) arranged in row-major order from top-left to bottom-right. The MTV Ray Tracer itself was significant in the history of computer graphics — distributed freely via the comp.graphics Usenet newsgroup, it introduced many programmers and students to the principles of ray tracing: ray-object intersection, reflection, refraction, shadows, and recursive shading. The MTV format was the program's native output, and its simplicity made it easy for users to write custom viewers and converters on whatever platform they had access to — a practical necessity in the fragmented Unix workstation landscape of the late 1980s. One advantage is extreme implementation simplicity: the format can be read in a handful of lines of code in any programming language, with no libraries, no compression algorithms, and no metadata parsing required — just read two integers and then read width x height x 3 bytes of pixel data. The format's historical significance in the computer graphics community provides another dimension — MTV files from early ray tracing experiments represent primary artifacts from the era when ray tracing transitioned from academic research to accessible software. MTV files are supported by ImageMagick and various legacy graphics tools.
Initial release: 1988

Frequently Asked Questions

Why convert T42 to MTV?

MTV is a simple raw image format used by raytracing software — converting T42 fonts to MTV provides texture inputs for 3D rendering scenes.

How do I open an MTV file?

ImageMagick can read and write MTV. Raytracing engines that originated the format also support it. GIMP can open it through ImageMagick integration.

Is MTV widely used?

MTV is a niche format from the raytracing community. For broader compatibility, PNG or EXR are better choices. For specific raytracers, MTV is ideal.

Can I convert multiple fonts?

Yes. Batch-upload T42 files and Convertio produces an individual MTV image for each.

Is this free?

Yes — T42 to MTV conversion is free on Convertio. No account or software installation required.