Processing: Efficiently create uniform grid - image

Question

I'm trying to create a grid of an image (in the way one would tile a background with). Here's what I've been using:
PImage bgtile;
PGraphics bg;
int tilesize = 50;
void setup() {
int t = millis();
fullScreen(P2D);
background(0);
bgtile = loadImage("bgtile.png");
int bgw = ceil( ((float) width) / tilesize) + 1;
int bgh = ceil( ((float) height) / tilesize) + 1;
bg = createGraphics(bgw*tilesize,bgh*tilesize);
bg.beginDraw();
for(int i = 0; i < bgw; i++){
for(int j = 0; j < bgh; j++){
bg.image(bgtile, i*tilesize, j*tilesize, tilesize, tilesize);
}
}
bg.endDraw();
print(millis() - t);
}
The timing code says that this takes about a quarter of a second, but by my count there's a full second once the window opens before anything shows up on screen (which should happen as soon as draw is first run). Is there a faster way to get this same effect? (I want to avoid rendering bgtile hundreds of times in the draw loop for obvious reasons)

Answer 1

One way could be to make use of the GPU and let OpenGL repeat a texture for you.
Processing makes it fairly easy to repeat a texture via textureWrap(REPEAT)
Instead of drawing an image you'd make your own quad shape and instead of calling vertex(x, y) for example, you'd call vertex(x, y, u, v); passing texture coordinates (more low level info on the OpenGL link above). The simple idea is x,y would control the geometry on screen and u,v would control how the texture is applied to the geometry.
Another thing you can control is textureMode() which allows you control how you specify the texture coordinates (U, V):
IMAGE mode is the default: you use pixel coordinates (based on the dimensions of the texture)
NORMAL mode uses values between 0.0 and 1.0 (also known as normalised values) where 1.0 means the maximum the texture can go (e.g. image width for U or image height for V) and you don't need to worry about knowing the texture image dimensions
Here's a basic example based on the textureMode() example above:
PImage img;
void setup() {
fullScreen(P2D);
noStroke();
img = loadImage("https://processing.org/examples/moonwalk.jpg");
// texture mode can be IMAGE (pixel dimensions) or NORMAL (0.0 to 1.0)
// normal means 1.0 is full width (for U) or height (for V) without having to know the image resolution
textureMode(NORMAL);
// this is what will make handle tiling for you
textureWrap(REPEAT);
}
void draw() {
// drag mouse on X axis to change tiling
int tileRepeats = (int)map(constrain(mouseX,0,width), 0, width, 1, 100);
// draw a textured quad
beginShape(QUAD);
// set the texture
texture(img);
// x , y , U , V
vertex(0 , 0 , 0 , 0);
vertex(width, 0 , tileRepeats, 0);
vertex(width, height, tileRepeats, tileRepeats);
vertex(0 , height, 0 , tileRepeats);
endShape();
text((int)frameRate+"fps",15,15);
}
Drag the mouse on the Y axis to control the number of repetitions.
In this simple example both vertex coordinates and texture coordinates are going clockwise (top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left order).
There are probably other ways to achieve the same result: using a PShader comes to mind.
Your approach caching the tiles in setup is ok.
Even flattening your nested loop into a single loop at best may only shave a few milliseconds off, but nothing substantial.
If you tried to cache my snippet above it would make a minimal difference.
In this particular case, because of the back and forth between Java/OpenGL (via JOGL), as far as I can tell using VisualVM, it looks like there's not a lot of room for improvement since simply swapping buffers takes so long (e.g. bg.image()):

Answer 2

An easy way to do this would be to use processing's built in get(); which saves a PImage of the coordinates you pass, for example: PImage pic = get(0, 0, width, height); will capture a "screenshot" of your entire window. So, you can create the image like you already are, and then take a screenshot and display that screenshot.
PImage bgtile;
PGraphics bg;
PImage screenGrab;
int tilesize = 50;
void setup() {
fullScreen(P2D);
background(0);
bgtile = loadImage("bgtile.png");
int bgw = ceil(((float) width) / tilesize) + 1;
int bgh = ceil(((float) height) / tilesize) + 1;
bg = createGraphics(bgw * tilesize, bgh * tilesize);
bg.beginDraw();
for (int i = 0; i < bgw; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < bgh; j++) {
bg.image(bgtile, i * tilesize, j * tilesize, tilesize, tilesize);
}
}
bg.endDraw();
screenGrab = get(0, 0, width, height);
}
void draw() {
image(screenGrab, 0, 0);
}
This will still take a little bit to generate the image, but once it does, there is no need to use the for loops again unless you change the tilesize.
#George Profenza's answer looks more efficient than my solution, but mine may take a little less modification to the code you already have.