Getting from getCharBoundaries to BitMapData - actionscript-3

Question

I'm trying to convert all letters in a textfield to bitmap data. I then want to animate each of them. I'm able to return an array of rectangles using getCharBoundaries. But then how do I convert each letter to BitMapData?
package
{
import flash.display.Sprite;
import flash.geom.Rectangle;
import flash.text.TextField;
import flash.text.TextFieldType;
import flash.text.TextFormat;
public class LetterBitmapData extends Sprite
{
private var tf:TextField;
private var letterSprite:Sprite;
public function LetterBitmapData()
{
makeTF();
getRectangles();
};
private function makeTF():void
{
tf = new TextField();
tf.width = 400;
tf.height = 100;
tf.selectable = false;
tf.multiline = true;
tf.wordWrap = true;
tf.text = "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York.";
tf.setTextFormat(new TextFormat("_sans", 16, 0));
addChild(tf);
}
private function getRectangles():Array
{
var result:Array = [];
var rectangle:Rectangle;
for (var i:int = 0; i < tf.text.length; i++)
{
rectangle = tf.getCharBoundaries(i);
result.push(rectangle); //create an array of CharBoundary rectangles
//trace("RECTANGLE x: " + rectangle.x + " y: " + rectangle.y + " width: " + rectangle.width + " height: " + rectangle.height );
}
return result;
}
}
}

Answer 1

You could animate your letters without turning them into Bitmaps as long as you're using embed fonts that is...
Instead of creating an array of rectangles, you could create an array of TextFields , associated to their specific rectangle in order to keep the coordinates of each letter. After that it should be possible to animate each TextField.