A method and system for rendering three-dimensional graphics, including text, provide a compressed texture bitmap. The texture bitmap may represent multiple symbols, each comprised of multiple pixels. Each pixel in the texture bitmap may store information for more than one symbol, including compressed pixels corresponding to multiple distinct symbols. For example, the compressed texture bitmap may have n-bit pixels (e.g., 8-bit pixels) that each store m (e.g., four) n/m-bit (e.g., 2-bit) compressed values. The compressed texture bitmap may be configured for unpacking by a conventional pixel shader, such as a pixel shader that does not typically perform bitwise operations. The unpacking may include matching a fetched pixel to a value in a lookup table, such as a 32-bit value from a 256-color palette. The looked-up value can be separated into separate sub-values to facilitate processing by the pixel shader. For example, the looked-up value can be split into RGBA values conventionally used in processing colored pixels.