Multiple Transparency Layers - ios

Please be kind, I'm new to this....
I have an application that I'm developing where I need to take a PNG image, which has a transparency layer, and treat another color (I'm thinking of using RGB( 1, 1, 1 ), since it's so close to pure black that I can hard-code it) as a separate transparency layer. The reason for this is that I have a background image sitting behind the PNG image that I would like to still display as my sprite gets filled (by adding a progress bar to the sprite), and I only want the portions of the sprite that aren't of the given color to reflect the color fill of the progress bar. In this way, I can avoid having to deal with vector computations for the outline of the image within the sprite, flood the area outside of the discernable image with my new "transparent" color, and be on my merry way.
I've tried using shaders, but they seem to be less than helpful.

There is no way that I know of due to Open GL not allowing you to do it. You will either have to modify the pixel data manually or write a shader (Which you hav already done ).

Related

Adding border to edges of opaque area of UIImage with a filter

Hello: Currently in my project, I'm using OBShapedButton to process touches on a lot of objects that overlap (it's a map with each territory its own separate object). Basically, this library prevents a touch from being processed on a transparent point on the given view.
I'm attempting to add a border effect to just the edges of the opaque part of the UIImage (and adding a semi-transparent overlay above that). Something to the effect of this:
Which can be simplified to this (example of one image):
I am currently using MGImageUtilities to color in the opaque parts of territories using this line:
[territory setImage:[[territory image] imageTintedWithColor:tint]];
The problem is that I'm not sure how to just color the borders (which can be any shape). I've looked at this link already, but haven't been able to come up with anything.
Thanks in advance for the help!
Terribly hacky, but use MGImageUtilities' UIImage+ProportionalFill with scale resizing to create a slightly larger image, UIImage+Tint to red, and stack below.
The library you are using doesn't actually specify a shape layer. It uses alpha values from the PNGs that you give it.
Could you use a different 'highlighted' or 'selected' PNG that adds the border effect you are looking for?
Otherwise, it you will have to generate a UIBezierPath from your PNG image, which sounds like a very computationally intensive operation. At that point, I might question whether this library meets your needs.

How to do Water color painting in iOS using CoreGraphics? [duplicate]

I have been working with OpenGL in iOS, and setting the colors with glColor4f(r,g,b,a) and then drawing my own color on a white UIImageView. I basically have a brush, which is then moved around my user's touch, and then it paints the color onto the canvas. But this color needs to be water paint (like smudged color)
Does anyone understand/knows how to get a water color like this app does, and how the background UIImageView has a texture on it?
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hello-watercolor/id539414526?mt=8
or checkout water paint in this. http://www.fiftythree.com/paper
I created a bounty on this as I am really having a hard time to grasp how to derive such smooth flowing colors out of the normal colors. Even if you guys point me in the right direction, or to some sample code on how I can get the effect of water-paint, it would be really helpful ^_^
And as a bonus, it would be also be helpful if you can point out to me how to get canvas on which it is painted on looks realistic, and blended with the paint? Does Blending/GLSL have to do with any of this?
Is there any sample project on this?
If you are still struggling with the basics of getting realistic looking water colors working, you may want to experiment/prototype in photoshop first.
http://www.zoepiel.com/tutorials/watercolor/ shows some very effective tricks for creating watercolor images with simple tools.
The most interesting one is to multiply a group of watercolor layers with a greyscale watercolor paper image. The texture of the paper makes some parts remain white, and other parts saturate with color, just like real watercolor.
Each layer remains 'wet' in the sense that the colors within it blend, but the layers are 'dry' with respect to each other.
She also explains some of her brush and blur settings and shows what they do.
Once you can produce the desired effect in photoshop, you'll have clear specifications of what you want to do and you'll be quite a bit closer to programming it out.
Looking at the examples you posted, it looks like they are using a simple Gaussian Blur with a radius of double your brush size. This may be an incomplete solution, but it's at least the first level.

iOS FloodFill : UIImage vs Core Graphics

I'm considering building an app that would make heavy use of a flood fill / paint bucket feature. The images I'd be coloring are simply like coloring book pages; white background, black borders. I'm debating which is better to use UIImage (by manipulating pixel data) or drawing the images with Core Graphics and changing the fill color on touch.
With UIImage, I'm unable to account for retina images properly; it destroys the image when I write the context into a new UIImage, but I can probably figure out. I open to tips though...
With CoreGraphics, I have no idea how to calculate which shape to fill when a user touches an area and then actually filling that area. I've looked but I have not turned up a successful search.
Overall, I believe the optimal solution is using CoreGraphics, since it'll be lighter overall and I won't have to keep several copies of the same image for different sizes.
Thoughts? Go easy on me! It's my first app and first SO question ;)
I'd suggest using Core Graphics.
Instead of images, define the shapes using CGPath or NSBezierPath, and use Core Graphics to stroke and/or fill the shapes. Filling shapes is then as easy as switching drawing mode from just stroking to stroking and filling.
Creating even more complex shapes is made much easier with the "PaintCode" app (which lets you draw and creates the path code for you).
As your first app, I would suggest something with a little less custom graphics fiddling, though.

how to fill solid color into the shape of a transparent PNG file with actionscript3?

For example, I have a transparent png file, the shape is a car.
In the png file, I only draw the white border shape.
Outside and inside the border are all transparent.
I want to use actionscript3 code to show the car object with different color, it means only fill color inside the border, and for the outside of the border, keep transparent.
How to do that?
So far, the simplest workaround is to prepare many images with PhotoShop, but it's not good enough for me. When I have many shapes and use many colors, I've to prepare many many images.
Add more details:
(Because I'm using white border, you may not see the basic png file if your background of browser is white)
Change my boarder of shape to black, hope this is helpful to understand my question.
Since you're working with loaded images/pixels you can make use of BitmapData's floodFill() which pretty much does what you need. There's an example in bellow the method description as well.
It does pretty much what you need, although in some cases it might not be perfect. It's worth having a look at Jan's optimizing the floodFill() method article which goes more in depth.
A simple solution is to use multiple layers. The top layer would contain just the border. The lower layer would contain just the car with no border. You can adjust the colour of the car layer using a ColorTransform or ColorMatrixFilter.

iOS: Smooth button Glow effect by blending between images

I am creating a custom button that needs to be able to glow to a varying degree
How would I use these pictures to make a button that 'glows' the diamond when it is pressed, and have this glow gradually fade back to inert state?
I want to churn out several different colours of diamond as well... I am hoping to generate all different coloured diamonds from the same stock images presented here.
I would like to get my head around the basic methods available, in enough detail that I can see each one through and make a decision which path to take...
My tangled efforts so far... ( I will delete all of this, or move it into possibly several answers as a solution unfolds... )
I can see 3 potential solution paths:
GL
it looks as though GL has everything it takes to get complete fine-grained control over the process, although functions exposed by core graphics come tantalisingly close, and that would save several hundred lines of code spread over a bunch of source files, which seems a bit ridiculous for such a basic task.
core graphics, and core animation to accomplish the blending
documentation goes on to say
Anything underneath the unpainted samples, such as the current fill color or other drawing, shows through.
so I can chroma-key mask the left image, setting {0,0,0} ie Black as the key.
this at least secures a transparent background, now I have to work on making it yellow instead of grey.
so maybe I could have started instead with setting a yellow back colour for my image context, then use some CGContextSetBlendMode(...) to imprint the diamond on the yellow, THEN use chroma-key masking to get a transparent background
ok, this covers at least getting the basic unlit image on-screen
now I could overlay the sparkly image, using some blend mode, maybe I could keep it in its current greyscale state, and that would just boost the colours of the original
only problem with this is that it is a lot of heavy real-time blending
so maybe I could pre-calculate every image in the animation... this is looking increasingly mucky...
Cocos2D
if this allows me to set the blend mode to additive blending then I could just composite the glowing image over the original image with an appropriate Alpha setting.
After digging through a lot of documentation, the optimal solution seems to be to use core graphics functions to get the source images into a single 2-component GL texture, and then use GL to blend between them.
I will need to pass a uniform value glow_factor into the shader
The obvious solution might seem to simply use
r,g,b = in_r,g,b * { (1 - glow_factor) * inertPixel + glow_factor * shinyPixel }
(where inertPixel is the appropriate pixel of the inert diamond etc)...
it looks like I would also do well to manufacture my own sparkles and add them over the top; a gem should sparkle white irrespective of its characteristic colour.
After having looked at this problem a little more, I can see several solutions
Solution A -- store the transition from glow=0 to glow=1 as 60 frames in memory, then load the appropriate frame into a GL texture every time it is required.
this has an obvious benefit that a graphic designer could construct the entire sequence and I could load it in as a bunch of PNG files.
another advantage is that these frames wouldn't need to be played in sequence... the appropriate frame can be chosen on-the-fly
however, it has a potential drawback of a lot of sending data RAM->VRAM
this can be optimised by using glTexSubImage2D; several frames can be sent simultaneously and then unpacked from within GL... in fact maybe the entire sequence. if this is so, then it would make sense to use PVRT texture compression.
iOS: playing a frame-by-frame greyscale animation in a custom colour
Solution B -- load glow=0 and glow=1 images as GL textures, and manually write shader code that takes in the glow factor as a uniform and performs the blend
this has an advantage that it is close to the wire and can be tweaked in all sorts of ways. Also it is going to be very efficient. This advantage is that it is a big extra slice of code to maintain.
Solution C -- set glBlendMode to perform additive blending.
then draw the glow=0 image image, setting eg alpha=0.2 on each vertex.
then draw the glow=1 image image, setting eg alpha=0.8 on each vertex.
this has an advantage that it can be achieved with a more generic code structure -- ie a very general ' draw textured quad / sprite ' class.
disadvantage is that without some sort of wrapper it is a bit messy... in my game I have a couple of dozen diamonds -- at any one time maybe 2 or 3 are likely to be glowing. so first-pass I would render EVERYTHING ( just need to set Alpha appropriately for everything that is glowing ) and then on the second pass I could draw the glowing sprite again with appropriate Alpha for everything that IS glowing.
it is worth noting that if I pursue solution A, this would involve creating some sort of real-time movie player object, which could be a very useful reusable code component.

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