Draw Text with sdk

well, that depends on what you mean by "draw pixels on screen". i can think of 2 meanings:

1. draw into the effect's render buffer. that buffer is used by a layer when rendering a comp's result.

2. drawing a UI on top of the comp, or in the ECW. such pixels are not used in the comp's result and are just there to guide the user.

drawbot is used only for UI. the drawbot suites will only operate on a ui buffer handed to your plug-in by AE with a special drawing content. you can't use drawbot for rendering to a "normal" render buffer.

in the "CCU" sample project, you can see how to access render buffer pixels directly. you can then rasterize text using an os buffer and os api (such as gdiplus or quartz), and then copy the pixels onto the effect buffer. you can also use 3d party libraries to rasterze the text or do some drawing and then copy the pixels over to AE's render buffer.