Special embroidery digitizing software like the Janome Digitizer can create a vector based embroidery design from a bitmap source, or even fonts (such as TTF TrueType fonts) in some cases (which is what ttf to pes conversion represents). So it should be possible to use such programs in order to convert fonts (usually use them to make some kind signs) and prepare an embroidery designs in one of the vendor specific format, such as PES format in Brother machines.
Open TTF file Open PES fileAn embroidery design tool from Janome