Getting rid of artifacts on generated gradient textures - algorithm

I'm generating a falloff texture by adding gradient part to the white image I have. If implementation is relevant, I'm doing it with HTML5 canvas. For some reason I'm getting weird ray like while artifacts where it's supposed to be gradient smooth. I couldn't find any way to take care of that on implementation level, so I have to get rid of them after generating. Question is, if I have per pixel access to the image, how do I recognize those white pixels and replace with pixels to keep the gradient smooth?

The rays are caused by overlaps and rounding errors. They can be removed or at least reduced by using a Gaussian blur filter (which in effect act as a low-pass filter).
To avoid new problems such as the inner shape's black pixels leaking into the gradient, I'd suggest these steps:
Fill inner shape in the same color as the start color of the gradient.
Produce gradients
Apply Gaussian blur using either the filter property of context (f.ex context.filter = "blur(7px)";, reset by setting it to none), or by using a manual implementation
Redraw the inner shape in the destination color.
Now it's a simple matter of experimenting with the blur radius to find an optimal value. Note that blurring will add to the gradient so you might want to link the two so that the radius of the gradient is reduced when blur radius is increased.
Pro-tip: you can also drop the gradient production all together and simply make the glow effect using Gaussian blur (run example below).
var ctx = c.getContext("2d");
ctx.moveTo(300, 50);
ctx.quadraticCurveTo(325, 300, 550, 550);
ctx.quadraticCurveTo(300, 500, 50, 550);
ctx.quadraticCurveTo(250, 300, 300, 50);
ctx.closePath();
// blur next drawings
ctx.filter = "blur(20px)"; // glow radius
// produce a full base using fill and heavy stroke
ctx.fillStyle = ctx.strokeStyle = "#fff";
ctx.fill();
ctx.lineWidth = 40; // thicker = stronger spread
ctx.stroke();
// final, fill center in destination color
ctx.filter = "none";
ctx.fillStyle = "#000";
ctx.fill();
#c {background:#000}
<canvas id=c width=600 height=600></canvas>

Related

draw circle with varying stroke weight

how would a go about drawing the inner blue slice of this circle, to simulate varying stroke weight.
I have tried a approach where i draw the stroke by drawing small circles on each angle of the circle and increasing the radius on certain parts of the circle. But this doesnt give the right result because the circle gets "pixelated" in the edge, and it skews the circle outwards.
There is no easy way to accomplish this. Part of the difficulty is that Canvas, the underlying technology that p5.js uses to draw graphics, doesn't support variable stroke weights either. In Scalable Vector Graphics, which has similar limitations, the best way to accomplish this would be to describe the shape as the outer perimeter, and the perimeter of the inner void, and then fill the shape without any stroke. I think Canvas would support this approach, but I don't think it can be done easily with p5.js because there's now way to jump to a new position when drawing bezier curves with beginShape()/bezierVertex(). However, one way you could do this in p5.js would be to fill the outer shape and then "remove" the inner void. If you want to draw this on top of other existing graphics then the best way is to draw this shape to a separate p5.Graphics object which you then draw to your main canvas with image():
let sprite;
function setup() {
createCanvas(windowWidth, windowHeight);
sprite = createGraphics(100, 100);
sprite.noStroke();
sprite.fill('black');
sprite.angleMode(DEGREES);
sprite.circle(50, 50, 100);
// switch to removing elements from the graphics
sprite.erase();
// Translate and rotate to match the shape you showed in your question
sprite.translate(50, 50);
sprite.rotate(-45);
// Remove a perfect semi circle from one half, producing regular 5px stroke circle
sprite.arc(0, 0, 90, 90, -90, 90);
// Remove a half-ellipse from the other side of the circle, but this time the
// height matches the previous arc, but the width is narrower.
// Note: the angles for this arc overlap the previous removal by a few degrees
// to prevent there from being a visible seam in between the two removed shapes.
sprite.arc(0, 0, 70, 90, 85, 275, OPEN);
}
function draw() {
background('lightgray');
image(sprite, mouseX - 50, mouseY - 50);
}
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/p5.js/1.4.0/p5.js"></script>

HTML canvas fillRect with low opacity doesn't affect dark pixels

Repeatedly drawing a semi-opaque black rectangle over the entire canvas before each animation frame is an easy way to get an afterimage effect for moving shapes and it gives me exactly what I need - up to a point. With too slow a fade it doesn't fade all the way to black. Here's an example:
var canv = document.createElement('canvas');
document.body.appendChild(canv);
var ctx = canv.getContext('2d');
ctx.fillStyle = 'rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)';
ctx.fillRect(0, 0, 100, 100);
ctx.fillStyle = 'rgba(255, 255, 255, 1)';
ctx.fillRect(20, 20, 60, 60);
window.requestAnimationFrame(doFade);
function doFade() {
// Never fades away completely
ctx.fillStyle = 'rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.02)';
ctx.fillRect(20, 20, 60, 60);
window.requestAnimationFrame(doFade);
}
jsfiddle
This looks to me like a numeric precision problem - you can't expect the canvas to keep floating point pixel values around - but I'm not sure how to get around this.
I tried reading the image into a pattern, blanking the canvas, and then filling with the pattern at lower opacity in the hope that I could make rounding error work in my favor, but it seems to have the same result.
Short of reading out the image data and setting to black any pixels below a certain threshold, which would be prohibitively slow, I'm running out of ideas and could use some suggestions.
Thanks!
I thought I'd share my solution for the benefit of anyone else who might run into this problem. I was hoping to avoid doing any pixel-level manipulation, but beyond a certain threshold it's just not possible with the built-in canvas operations because the underlying bitmap is only 8 bits per channel and small fades will work out to less than one least significant bit and won't have any effect on the image data.
My solution was to create an array representing the age of each pixel. After each frame is drawn, I scan the imageData array, looking only at the alpha channel. If the alpha is 255 I know the pixel has just been written, so I set the age to 0 and set the alpha to 254. For any other non-zero alpha values, I increment the pixel age and then set the new alpha based on the pixel age.
The mapping of pixel age to alpha value is done with a lookup table that's populated when the fade rate is set. This lets me use whatever decay curve I want without extra math during the rendering loop.
The CPU utilization is a bit higher, but it's not too much of a performance hit and it can do smooth fades over several seconds and always fades entirely to black eventually.

In Processing, getting constant stroke width independent of scale

What value fed to strokeWidth() will give a stroke width of one pixel regardless of the current scale() setting?
I think strokeWeight(0) should work. Here is an example:
void setup() {
size(100,100);
noFill();
scale(10);
// 1st square, stroke will be 10 pixels
translate(3,3);
strokeWeight(1);
beginShape();
vertex(-1.0, -1.0);
vertex(-1.0, 1.0);
vertex( 1.0, 1.0);
vertex( 1.0, -1.0);
endShape(CLOSE);
// 2nd square, stroke will be 1 pixel
translate(3,3);
strokeWeight(0);
beginShape();
vertex(-1.0, -1.0);
vertex(-1.0, 1.0);
vertex( 1.0, 1.0);
vertex( 1.0, -1.0);
endShape(CLOSE);
}
Kevin did offer a couple of good approaches.
Your question doesn't make it clear what level of comfort you have with the language. My assumption (and I could be wrong) is that the layers approach isn't clear as you might have not used PGraphics before.
However, this option Kevin provided is simple and straight forward:
multiplying the coordinates manually
Notice most drawing functions take not only the coordinates, but also dimensions ?
Don't use scale(), but keep track of a multiplier floating point variable that you use for the shape dimensions. Manually scale the dimensions of each shape:
void draw(){
//map mouseX to a scale between 10% and 300%
float scale = map(constrain(mouseX,0,width),0,width,0.1,3.0);
background(255);
//scale the shape dimensions, without using scale()
ellipse(50,50, 30 * scale, 30 * scale);
}
You can run this as a demo bellow:
function setup(){
createCanvas(100,100);
}
function draw(){
//map mouseX to a scale between 10% and 300%
var scale = map(constrain(mouseX,0,width),0,width,0.1,3.0);
background(200);
//scale the shape dimensions, without using scale()
ellipse(50,50, 30 * scale, 30 * scale);
}
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/p5.js/0.5.7/p5.min.js"></script>
Another answer is in the question itself: what value would you feed to strokeWidth() ? If scale() is making the stroke bigger, but you want to keep it's appearance the same, that means you need to use a smaller stroke weight as scale increases: the thickness is inversely proportional to the scale:
void draw(){
//map mouseX to a scale between 10% and 300%
float scale = map(constrain(mouseX,0,width),0,width,0.1,3.0);
background(255);
translate(50,50);
scale(scale);
strokeWeight(1/scale);
//scaled shape, same appearing stroke, just smaller in value as scale increases
ellipse(0,0, 30, 30);
}
You can run this bellow:
function setup(){
createCanvas(100,100);
}
function draw(){
//map mouseX to a scale between 10% and 300%
var scaleValue = map(constrain(mouseX,0,width),0,width,0.1,3.0);
background(240);
translate(50,50);
scale(scaleValue);
strokeWeight(1/scaleValue);
//scale the shape dimensions, without using scale()
ellipse(0,0, 30, 30);
}
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/p5.js/0.5.7/p5.min.js"></script>
Kevin was patient, not only to answer your question, but also your comments, being generous with his time. You need to be patient to carefully read and understand the answers provided. Try it on your own then come back with specific questions on clarifications if that's the case. It's the best way to learn.
Simply asking "how do I do this ?" without showing what you're tried and what your thinking behind the problem is, expecting a snippet to copy/paste will not get your very far and this is not what stackoverflow is about.
You'll have way more to gain by learning, using the available documentation and especially thinking about the problem on your own first. You might not crack the problem at the first go (I know I certainly don't), but reasoning about it and viewing it from different angles will get your gears going.
Always be patient, it will serve you well on the long run, regardless of the situation.
Update Perhaps you mean by
What value fed to strokeWidth() will give a stroke width of one pixel regardless of the current scale() setting?
is how can you draw without anti-aliasing ?
If so, you can disable smoothing via a line: calling noSmooth(); once in setup(). Try it with the example code above.
None.
The whole point of scale() is that it, well, scales everything.
You might want to draw things in layers: draw one scaled layer, and one unscaled layer that contains the single-pixel-width lines. Then combine those layers.
That won't work if you need your layers to be mixed, such as an unscaled line on top of a scaled shape, on top of another scaled line. In that case you'll just have to unscale before drawing your lines, then scale again to draw your shapes.

Give 2d image customization to produce real view

Is it possible to add image/text on the 2d image so that it gives a real view.For example as present in : http://www.zazzle.com/make_your_own_iphone_5_case-179092402149274498.
These views are orthographic and isometric views and they can be reproduced using affine transformations in canvas, as they are also parallelograms.
First you will need to make masks for the different cases. These needs to be drawn in the same orientation as the case in the "photo". Use solid pixels (any color will do, it won't show in later step) where you want the custom graphics to show, transparent pixels anywhere else (anti-aliased pixels are fine).
Then draw in the mask in the canvas, select composite mode "source-in" to replace non-transparent pixels and finally, select blending mode "multiply" and draw the case "photo" on top to mix in shadows and highlights. The latter step is what will give the illusion of the image having depth.
For the isometric views, calculate the skew angle (or use trial and error if you're not sure if the image is accurate - this is as a rule-of-thumb usually tan(60°), ie. transform(1, 0, Math.tan(60/180*Math.PI), 1, 0, 0)), then do the same process as above. Just remember only apply transformation when drawing the custom image, mask and top layer must be drawn without transformations.
The orthographic side views can be generated using scaling for the x-axis. Depending on which angle, add a stripe for the side of the case.
Example of steps
var img = new Image(),
cust = new Image(),
count = 2,
ctx = document.querySelector("canvas").getContext("2d");
img.onload = cust.onload = comp;
img.src = "http://i.stack.imgur.com/je0Jh.png";
cust.src = "http://i.stack.imgur.com/uRPDt.png";
function comp() {
if (--count) return;
// draw in mask
ctx.drawImage(img, 0, 0);
// comp. mode source-in
ctx.globalCompositeOperation = "source-in";
// draw in custom graphics
ctx.drawImage(cust, 0, 0, ctx.canvas.width, ctx.canvas.height);
// blend mode multiply
ctx.globalCompositeOperation = "multiply";
// draw in original case multiplied (does not work in IE)
ctx.drawImage(img, 0, 0);
}
<canvas with=263 height=505></canvas>
The quality largely depends on the quality of the mask - I made a very quick-n-dirty version here as you can see (your case image can also act as the mask btw).
The steps are the same for the isometric view with the exception of the skew transform. Multiply does not work in IE, you can use alpha here instead or make a separate mask containing only shadows etc.
That being said: remember that this is not the image sent to production. This will just show a representation of the final result. What is used is the image, image position and size. These data is then used to build an unmasked flat print-template which is used to make the phone-case.

Three.js pixel perfect at z=0 plane

Is there any way to configure the camera in Three.js so that when a 2d object (line, plane, image) is rendered at z=0, it doesn't bleed (from perspective) into other pixels.
Ex:
var plane = new THREE.Mesh(new THREE.PlaneGeometry(1, 1), material);
plane.position.x = 4;
plane.position.y = 3;
scene.add(plane);
...
// Get canvas pixel information
context.readPixels(....);
If you example the data from readPixels, I always find that the pixel is rendering into its surrounding pixels (ex: 3,3,0 may contain some color information), but would like it to be pixel perfect if the element that is draw is on the z=0 plane.
You probably want to use THREE.OrthographicCamera for the 2d stuff instead of THREE.PerspectiveCamera. That way they are not affected by perspective projection.
Which pixels get rendered depends on where your camera is. If your camera for example t z=1 then a lot of pixels will get rendered. If you move your camera to z=1000 then you see, due to perspective, maybe only 1 pixel will get rendered from your geometry.

Resources