Does anyone know why imagettftext doesn't open a font file

I am trying to use a font that I've uploaded in my website, but I keep getting this error:

"imagettftext(): Could not find/open font".

I have already tried using the putenv tool, but it still doesn't open the file. Is there an option on Bonfire that limits what kind of files that can be used? I am able to use the imagestring function, but I want to have other fonts.

I was able to load the font in an HTML file, so it looks like it has a problem with imagettftext().

    $image = imagecreatefrompng('/home/dev3/public_html/themes/admin/images/countdown.png');
    $font = array(
        'size'=>40,
        'angle'=>0,
        'x-offset'=>10,
        'y-offset'=>70,
        'file'=>'/home/dev3/public_html/fonts/DIGITALDREAM.ttf',
        'color'=>imagecolorallocate($image, 255, 255, 255),
    );

            $image = imagecreatefrompng('/home/dev3/public_html/themes/admin/images/countdown.png');
            // Open the first source image and add the text.
            $text = $interval->format('%a:%H:%I:%S');
            if(preg_match('/^[0-9]\:/', $text)){
                $text = '0'.$text;
            }
            $text,$font['color']);
            putenv('GDFONTPATH=' . realpath('.'));
            imagettftext ($image , $font['size'] , $font['angle'] , $font['x-offset'] , $font['y-offset'] , $font['color'],$font['file'] ,$text);

            ob_start();
            imagegif($image);
            ob_end_clean();

    $gif = new AnimatedGif($frames,$delays,$loops);
    $gif->display();

GD / FreeType font loading code is restricted to the local filesystem. Your code is trying to read the font from an HTTP URL:

$font = array(...
   'file'=>'https://dev3.successengineapps.com/fonts/DIGITALDREAM.ttf'
...);

The font-loading code in GD doesn't know how to make an HTTP request.

Here is an example of the minimal set of your code required to get some kind of output; that is, I didn't attempt a serious rewrite in any way of your code, but also stripped out anything that was not obviously directly related to the problem:

<?php
header('Content-Type: image/gif');
$image = imagecreatefrompng('https://dev3.successengineapps.com/themes/admin/images/countdown.png');
    $font = array(
        'size'=>40,
        'angle'=>0,
        'x-offset'=>10,
        'y-offset'=>70,
        'file'=>'./DIGITALDREAM.ttf',
        'color'=>imagecolorallocate($image, 255, 255, 255),
    );
$text = "Hello, world.";
if (imagettftext ($image , $font['size'] , $font['angle'] , $font['x-offset'] , $font['y-offset'] , $font['color'],$font['file'] ,$text)) {
        imagegif($image);
} else {
        var_dump($php_errormsg);
}

The output of this code is visible here:

My recommendation would be to start with this, and see if you can get working output, and then slowly add additional code back in until you either have a working solution, or find what is breaking it.