pixalate an image in html5 canvas - javascript

I've created a game that works with canvas, and i need it to be in a very low resolution to fit a software I'm working with. besically when I draw a diagonal line it should appear as a diagonal row of squares.
I did
context.mozImageSmoothingEnabled = false;
context.webkitImageSmoothingEnabled = false;
context.imageSmoothingEnabled = false;
but it's just blurry. How can I convert it?
the top picture is what it looks like now and the bottom is what i want it to look like

One approach is to use image smoothing disabled with a low-resolution canvas. Though you will get a blocky line, you will also get the anti-aliased pixels included. The only way to avoid this is to implement line algorithms etc. yourselves such as Bresenham (see below example).
You can also draw the lines, then run through the bitmap pixel by pixel and use a threshold value to filter the anti-aliased pixels away but this will give various results and is dependent on having isolated paths to work with, ie. draw to off-screen, filter with threshold, then draw result to main canvas.
An example:
var mctx = main.getContext("2d"),
lowRes = document.createElement("canvas"),
ctx = lowRes.getContext("2d");
// setup low-res canvas (invisible)
lowRes.width = 32;
lowRes.height = 20;
// setup main visible canvas
mctx.imageSmoothingEnabled =
mctx.msImageSmoothingEnabled =
mctx.mozImageSmoothingEnabled =
mctx.webkitImageSmoothingEnabled = false;
// draw a line to off-screen canvas
ctx.moveTo(0, lowRes.height);
ctx.lineTo(lowRes.width - 7, 4);
ctx.lineWidth=4;
ctx.strokeStyle = "#fff";
ctx.stroke();
// draw bacground on main canvas
mctx.fillRect(0,0,500,300);
// draw in low-res line
mctx.drawImage(lowRes, 0,0,lowRes.width,lowRes.height,
0,0,main.width,main.height);
<canvas id="main" width=500 height=300></canvas>
I would also like to propose to check out my Retro Context library (free/GPL3) which was made for this very reason. It has implemented all these line algorithms and has a full and simple API to access them (and much more "retro" related).
Optionally, you would need to implement these line algorithms yourselves. Here are some resources to help you get started if you chose this approach:
Bresenham line algorithm
Mid-point circle algorithm

Related

What is the best way to programatically draw the border(s) of a group of squares?

I am building a tool which will ultimately leverage the Google Maps API v3 to build up an area on a map constructed of squares of a fixed edge length (e.g. 10 metres) on a fixed “grid” system (e.g., co-ordinates spaced out every 0.0001 latlong units starting at earth’s 0,0 point).
I have written code where users can click on an area on the map and the code draws an outline and fill of the square where it's found. Users can click on other adjacent locations to that square to build up a larger and larger “blocky” polygon, and can click on individual squares to delete them. I have tested all this myself in both HTML5 canvas/JavaScript as well as the Google Maps API.
Now I want to write code that removes any internal edges/vertices so that it only draws the outermost boundaries of this polygon so that it is actually drawn as one large polygon, rather than a collection of squares. Think of it this way: even though we know countries like Australia, USA etc., are comprised of a number of states, when we draw the border around the country we are not usually interested in the borders of all the states and can delete those lines in between and just draw the outer boundary. This is the same thing I want to accomplish, just using a grid of squares rather than complex polygons.
My current code is here:
https://jsfiddle.net/wyxcvmdf/14/
HTML:
<canvas id="myCanvas" width="500" height="250" style="border:1px solid #000000;"></canvas>
<!--etc.-->
JavaScript:
// don't forget to set load type in jsfiddle to no wrap in <body>
// define the global variable and some helper variables to make the code shorter
var gv = {};
gv.o = function(id) {
return document.getElementById(id)
};
gv.i = 'innerHTML';
// etc.
A couple of explanatory notes about my code:
• The “origin point” for every square is the vertex at the bottom left corner of that square. No particular reason for this.
• The “drawing direction” in terms of how HTML5 canvas draws the outline is counter-clockwise from the origin point. Again, no particular reason for this.
• You can’t “click” to add squares yet as it’s just a proof of concept, so you add squares by entering the x and y co-ordinates in the relevant text entry boxes
The use cases/tests required to prove my code which I have thought of are:
Square added to polygon with 1 duplicate vertex (working)
Square added to polygon with 2 and 3 duplicate vertices in all cases: adjacent edges, non-adjacent edges, non-sequential vertices (currently working for first case only)
Square added to polygon with 4 duplicate vertices in all cases: plugging a hole, plugging part of a hole, joining multiple polygons (currently working for first case only)
Square removed from polygon with 1 duplicate vertex in cases described above (not developed yet, but should effectively be “reverse” of addition code)
Square removed from polygon with 2 and 3 duplicate vertices in cases described above (not developed yet, but should effectively be “reverse” of addition code)
Square removed from polygon with 4 duplicate vertices in cases described above (not developed yet, but should effectively be “reverse” of addition code)
Square addition/removal on outside of polygon with multiple inner borders, i.e., holes (not developed yet, may be tricky)
Square addition/removal on inside of polygon with multiple inner borders, i.e., holes (not developed yet, may be tricky)
Note 1: My use of “squares”, “edge” etc., instead of "polygons", etc., is just for simplicity of explanation.
Note 2: I have performed quite a bit of research on similar problems and possible solutions but haven’t really found anything which will meet my needs. The research I’ve done is on:
Travelling Salesman Problem. However, this is not about optimising a path – it is about making sure a path is “drawable” and hence heading in one direction. Overlapping vertices are totally fine as long as the resulting shape looks like what a user would expect it to.
Convex hull algorithm. Not really applicable as the hull could be convex, concave or even non-contiguous! Also, I think that by simplifying to a grid system I have removed the problem of having many scattered vertices where you need to determine how far they are from a centre point, use trigonometry etc.
Concave hull solutions. This gets closer to solving my problem, however what I have seen is that there are many plug-ins for commercial tools (e.g. ArcGIS) to do this, but no generic code (irrespective of programming language) which covers all of my use cases.
Tile-based games. You would think that any tile-based game which requires drawing boundaries around tiles (e.g. A player’s territory in a real-time strategy game) would have solved this problem, but not from what I can see.
You say "draw" rather than calculate the outside vertices, so ...
You can use clipping plus compositing to "hollow out" your set of squares.
Assume you have determined that these squares are inside your desired boundary (either partially or fully inside):
var aInside=[ {x:60,y:60},{x:80,y:60},{x:40,y:60},{x:60,y:40},{x:60,y:80} ];
An illustration of squares that are inside your desired boundary.
Then, to draw just the boundary of the set of squares, you can:
Stroke (not fill) each of your inside squares: context.rect
Restrict futher drawing to the stroked rects: context.clip
Cause all new drawing to erase existing pixels: context.globalCompositeOperation = 'destination-out'
Fill the entire canvas with a solid color: context.fillRect(0,0,canvas.width,canvas.height).
The trick: Stroking a rectangle actually draws a stroke half-inside & half-outside the rectangle, so step#4 will erase the inside of the set of rectangles but (importantly!) will leave the half outside stroke.
So you end up with this:
Here's example code and a Demo:
var canvas=document.getElementById("canvas");
var ctx=canvas.getContext("2d");
var aInside=[ {x:60,y:60},{x:80,y:60},{x:40,y:60},{x:60,y:40},{x:60,y:80} ];
// stroke all inside squares
ctx.save();
ctx.beginPath();
for(var i=0;i<aInside.length;i++){
var s=aInside[i];
ctx.rect(s.x,s.y,20,20);
}
ctx.stroke();
// clip to cause all new drawing to be inside the stroked squares
ctx.clip();
// set compositing to use new drawings to "erase" existing drawings
ctx.globalCompositeOperation='destination-out';
// Fill (===erase!) the entire canvas
// Clipping causes only the clipping area to be erased
// so the inside of the rects set is "hollowed out"
ctx.fillRect(0,0,canvas.width,canvas.height);
ctx.restore();
body{ background-color: ivory; }
#canvas{border:1px solid red; }
<canvas id="canvas" width=150 height=150></canvas>
An Algorithmic Note: If you want a set of the surviving vertices rather than a drawing, you can modify the Marching Squares Algorithm to return only the inflection points. Those inflection points are the vertices of your outside boundary.
This method addresses only drawing/appearance - it does not produce any new polygons. But it allow you to use a collection of polygons (any shape, here rectangles) and merge them visually to produce a merged outline. I base this answer on one of my earlier answers, but modified and adopted to fit the scenario here:
Draw all the rectangles as solids
Re-draw them offset around all edges and corners extruded to the thickness you want
Redraw the original rectangles but with global composite mode set to destination-outand centered on top
There are a few steps, but it works pretty fast.
A couple of notes:
If you have an existing background it would be necessary to use an off-screen canvas as a temporary stage. Not shown here, though the steps would be the same except that you would do these steps on the off-screen context and at the end you would copy the content from the off-screen canvas on top of the existing content of your display canvas.
If you have a lot of rectangles it can be optimized by drawing each single rectangle to a separate off-screen canvas without redrawing anything else. Then you just use this off-screen canvas as a source when you do the extrusion process shown below (see link above for example, just replace image with off-screen canvas itself as source).
It can be further optimized by checking if a rectangle is embedded and if so remove it from the collection.
Demo
var ctx = c.getContext("2d"),
rw = 50, rh = 50, // some demo size
rectangles = []; // rectangle collection
function render(ctx) {
ctx.clearRect(0, 0, ctx.canvas.width, ctx.canvas.height);
ctx.fillStyle = "#a00";
ctx.globalCompositeOperation = "source-over"; // draw using standard mode3
// we will draw the same rects on top of each other eight times
// this will extrude the edge so we can in the next step punch a
// hole in the drawing and leave only the extrusion -
// offset array (x,y) pairs
var i, d = 2, // d = number of pixels to offset
offsets = [-d, -d, 0, -d, d, -d, d, 0, d, d, 0, d, -d, d, -d, 0];
for(i = 0; i < offsets.length; i += 2) {
ctx.setTransform(1,0,0,1, offsets[i], offsets[i+1]);
drawRects()
}
// punch hole in the center
ctx.setTransform(1,0,0,1,0,0); // reset transformatons
ctx.globalCompositeOperation = "destination-out"; // "erase" mode
drawRects(); // draw a final time, wo/ extrusion
function drawRects() {
ctx.beginPath();
rectangles.forEach(function(r) {
ctx.rect(r.x, r.y, r.w, r.h)
}); // loop through collection and draw
ctx.fill()
}
}
// demo stuff --
c.onclick = function(e) {
var r = this.getBoundingClientRect(), // for demo, get mouse position
x = e.clientX - r.left,
y = e.clientY - r.top;
// add rectangle to list
rectangles.push({ // generate a rect. from center
x: x - rw*0.5,
y: y - rh*0.5,
w: rw,
h: rh
});
render(ctx); // the key process
};
canvas {border:1px solid #000}
Click on the canvas below to place rectangles:<br>
<canvas width=600 height=600 id=c></canvas>

HTML5 Canvas bitmaps

I am building a retro styled game, that uses pixelated images. I have not yet created these images, because I wanted to know the best way of doing things.
These images will probably be a 16 or 32 PX square, but I would like to be able to scale the images as big as I like, just without any blur/distortion.
What format should I use? And how should I import them to my canvas. as well?
EDIT#1: Fixed typo & put Q back on topic. (Thank you Spence for pointing it out)
Try "Inkscape", its free
https://inkscape.org/en/
it uses SVG format (scalar vector graphics) so you will be able to scale the images as big as you like, just without any blur/distortion.
The only way to enlarge without any blur or distortion is turn each 1 pixel into a set of 2x2, 3x3, ... pixels.
For example, a single blue pixel in the top-left of the image would become a set of 4 blue pixels at [0,0], [1,0], [0,1] & [1,1]. And the same for every other pixel on the original image. The resulting image would be twice the width & height of the original image.
Since your graphics style is pixelated images, this adjustment would preserve your pixilation while also enlarging the original image.
You can code a function that uses an in-memory html5 canvas to "resize-by-multiplying" your original images as needed. This will use canvas's ability to set the RGBA values every pixel using context.getImageData and context.putImageData.
CanvasContext2d does have an option to disable the image smoothing : imageSmoothingEnabled which is set to true by default.
According to the specs, if set to false,
The image [drawn by drawImage() method] must be rendered using
nearest-neighbor interpolation.
This algorithm is the same as the one proposed by #markE in his answer.
Unfortunately, browsers still use vendor-prefix for this attribute and it wasn't implemented in both IE9 and IE10...
var img = document.querySelector('img'),
canvas = document.querySelector('canvas'),
ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');
// draw the image
img.onload = function(){
canvas.width = img.width*50;
canvas.height = img.height*50;
// disable smoothing after we change canvas' width/height
ctx.mozImageSmoothingEnabled = false;
ctx.webkitImageSmoothingEnabled = false;
ctx.msImageSmoothingEnabled = false;
ctx.imageSmoothingEnabled = false;
ctx.drawImage(img, 0,0, canvas.width, canvas.height);
}
//32x32px image taken from https://stackoverflow.com/q/31910043/3702797
img.src="http://i.stack.imgur.com/3Sp5x.png"
canvas{border:.5px solid}
<img/>
<canvas></canvas>
Scroll to see the resized image in canvas
Create large icon images to which you apply a 16x16 or 32x32 tile effect. Then when you write them to the canvas (after loading the images of course) scale them down to the size you want using
context.drawImage(img,x,y,width,height);
File sizes are unlikely to jump greatly since each tile should compress fairly easily.

How redraw on canvas resize without blurring?

When the canvas element is resized (via the style changing) I also want to scale the canvas' drawn image as well. I cannot just change the height/width as this causes the canvas to clear itself, so I do:
Create a temporary canvas element
Draw the current canvas' image onto that temporary canvas
Resize the current canvas
Draw the temp canvas' image back to the current canvas but scaled to the new size
This results in some blurring - very noticeable after many resizes (example: when dragging to resize). How would I do this without any blurring?
EDIT: Turning off image smoothing (context.webkitImageSmoothingEnabled = false;) does not fix the problem, it simply makes it redraw it more and more jagged until the image looks nothing like the original after a number of resizes.
Called on resize event:
var tmpCanvas = null;
//Make a temporary canvas
tmpCanvas = document.createElement( "canvas" );
//Set its size to be equal
tmpCanvas.height = originalCanvas.height;
tmpCanvas.width = originalCanvas.width;
//Draw our current canvas onto it
tmpCanvas.getContext( "2d" ).drawImage( originalCanvas, 0, 0 );
//Set new dimensions
originalCanvas.width = originalCanvas.offsetWidth;
originalCanvas.height = originalCanvas.offsetHeight;
var originalContext = originalCanvas.getContext( "2d" );
//Set background and colors
originalContext.fillStyle = "#ffffff";
originalContext.strokeStyle = "#000000";
//Set paintbrush
originalContext.lineWidth = 4;
originalContext.lineCap = "round";
//Fill background as white
originalContext.fillRect( 0, 0, originalCanvas.width, originalCanvas.height );
//We have a saved signature
if ( SignatureCanvas.hasSignature === true )
{
//Draw it back but scaled (results in blurred image)
originalContext.drawImage( tmpCanvas, 0, 0, tmpCanvas.width, tmpCanvas.height, 0, 0, originalCanvas.width, originalCanvas.height );
/**
* This results in a blurred image as well
//Draw it back but scaled
originalContext.scale( originalCanvas.width / tmpCanvas.width, originalCanvas.height / tmpCanvas.height );
originalContext.drawImage( tmpCanvas, 0, 0, tmpCanvas.width, tmpCanvas.height, 0, 0, tmpCanvas.width, tmpCanvas.height );
*/
}
Is there a way to get the strokes and "scale" all those points and redraw?
Instead of taking the rendered image from the original canvas, actually redraw the image. By that, I mean execute the same logic you executed against the original canvas, but with the points involved scaled to the new size.
If you can, think about using SVG instead. It scales well by its nature.
Edit: Another option I've thought of is to simply use a gigantic canvas to start with. Sizing down tends to look better than sizing up, especially with smoothing on.
Edit II: The original answer was irrelevant, though the comment I had made is relevant, and am now promoting it and editing it to be an answer...and the answer I had given was not all that great anyway **.
Of course if you scale up raster graphics, that is, from an image with a smaller pixel dimensions of pixels, create an image with higher pixel dimensions, you are going to get blurred images. By scaling up, you're making a low resolution picture high resolution, but without the high resolution details.
There's absolutely no way around that blurriness unless you make multiple additional assumptions about your raster image like the only gray you'd see is at an image edge, or corners can only occur at apparent inflection points where the angle between the tangents of the joined curves must be 100 degrees or less. Essentially, you'd have to give additional information so that your higher resolution image can have detail "filled in". It's not all that terribly different from reverse engineering an SVG from a raster.
So, you appear to want to emulate is scaling vector graphics, in which the only solution is to save the commands, draw a SVG, or draw to a bigger canvas like Stuart Branham suggested.
** I had originally proposed that invoking drawImage would distort the pixels even if it were not scaled, and that it would be better to work with the actual pixel data. If that's true, I can't find proof, but that's irrelevant, as he wanted his image scaled up, without blurring...which is impossible, as I just mentioned.

Division / sub-canvas

I have few coordinates in an XML file. They are lines, circles and arcs. I am reading them in a data structure and then trying to plot them on a canvas. What i am trying to figure out is how to divide the canvas into sub canvases. e.g suppose my canvas is
<canvas id="myCanvas" width="800" height="600" role="img">
Your browser does not support the canvas element.
</canvas>
What I am trying to achieve is how to make an imaginary window of width and height of 200px starting from say x1=200px on canvas and y1=250. And draw the image I have only in that box.
I have managed to scale down the image based on the imaginary box but cannot get around the concept of how to draw only in that imaginary box. The points are randomly distributed.
There are other ways to achieve this but the one you'll probably find most useful in this context is to use translation and a clip mask:
var canvas = document.getElementById('myCanvas');
var ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');
/// for simplicity, save current settings
ctx.save();
/// move coordinate system to the upper left corner of isolated region
ctx.translate(offsetX, offsetY);
/// create a clipping mask by using a simple rectangle
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.rect(0, 0, width, height);
/// define the last path (rectangle) as clipping mask
ctx.clip();
/// ... draw other things into this region from offset 0...
ctx.restore(); /// done and back to full canvas
By moving the whole coordinate system to the upper left corner of your region you can use offsets relative to the new isolated area. By adding a clip mask anything drawn outside the region will be clipped.
You will need to do this for each region one by one.
Another way is to add an offset to all drawing points. For example:
ctx.lineTo(x + offsetX, y + offsetY);
where offsetX/Y is the upper left corner of the region.
However, it will get more complicated if you need clipping - not a huge issue with images as you can define the destination region but for lines and and other path operation you will need to clip yourself by using interpolation etc.
Here is a live demo demonstrating this:
Fiddle (updated link)
The demo sets up a canvas and context and then fills the whole with a red color.
Then if sets the clipping and mask and translate it.
We now have a "virtual canvas" and the other graphic is intact
We now fill the region with the same fill operation but with blue. Now we can see only this regions is filled even the size is outside the actual region
Then we remove the clip and draw a line as evidence that we are now back in full mode

Pixel perfect 2D mouse picking with Canvas

I'm writing a 2D game in html5 using Canvas which requires mouse click and hover events to be detected. There are 3 problems with this: detections must be pixel-perfect, objects are not rectangular (houses, weird-shaped UI buttons...), and it is required to be fast and responsive. (Obviously brute force is not an option)
So what I want to ask is how do I find out which object the mouse is on, and what are the possible optimizations.
P.S: I did some investigation and found a guy who used QuadTree here.
I have a (dated) tutorial that explains the concept of a ghost canvas which is decent for pixel-perfect hit detection. The tutorial is here. Ignore the warning about a newer tutorial, the newer one does not use the ghost canvas concept.
The idea is to draw the image in question to an in-memory canvas and then use getImageData to get the single pixel of the mouse click. Then you see if that single pixel is fully transparent or not.
If its not fully transparent, well, you've got your target.
If it is fully transparent, draw the next object to the in-memory canvas and repeat.
You only have to clear the in-memory canvas at the end.
getImageData is slow but it is your only option if you want pixel-perfect hit detection and aren't pre-computing anything.
Alternatively you could precompute a path or else an array of pixels with an offset. This would be a lot of work but might be faster. For instance if you have a 40x20 image with some transparency you'd compute an array[40][20] that would have true or false corresponding to transparent or not. Then you'd test that against the mouse position, with some offset, if the image is drawn at (25, 55) you'd want to subtract that from the mouse position and then test if the new position is true when you look at array[posx][posy].
That's my answer to your question. My Suggestion? Forget pixel-perfect detection if this is a game.
Seriously.
Instead make paths (not in canvas, in plain javascript code) that represent the objects but are not pixel perfect, for instance a house might be a square with a triangle on the top that is a very close approximation of the image but is used in its stead when it comes to hit testing. It is comparatively extremely fast to compute if a point is inside a path than it is to do pixel-perfect detection. Look up point in polygon winding number rule detection. That's your best bet, honestly.
The common solution in traditional game development is to build a click mask. You can re-render everything onto a separate off-screen canvas in a solid color (the rendering should be very quick). When you want to figure out what was clicked on, you simply sample the color at the x/y co-ordinate on the off-screen canvas. You end up building a color-->obj hash, akin to:
var map = {
'#000000' : obj1
, '#000001' : obj2
, ...
};
You can also optimize the rendering to the secondary canvas to only happen when the user clicks on something. And using various techniques, you can further optimize it to only draw the part of the canvas that the user has clicked on (for example, you can split you canvas into an NxN grid, e.g. a grid of 20x20 pixel squares, and flag all of the objects in that square -- you'd then only need to re-draw a small number of objects)
HTML5 Canvas is just a drawing plane, where you can set different transforms before calling each drawing API function. Objects cannot be created and there is no display list. So you have to build these features yourself or you can use different libraries available for this.
http://www.kineticjs.com/
http://easeljs.com/
A few months before I got interested in this and even wrote a library for this purpose. You can see it here : http://exsprite.com. Ended up facing a lot of performance issues, but because of lack of time I couldn't optimize it. It was really interesting, so waiting for some time to make it perfect.
I believe the comments should suffice. This is how I determine user intention in my 2d isometric scroller, currently located at http://untitled.servegame.com
var lastUp = 0;
function mouseUp(){
mousedown = false; //one of my program globals.
var timeNow = new Date().getTime();
if(mouseX == xmouse && mouseY == ymouse && timeNow > lastUp + 100){//if it was a centralized click. (mouseX = click down point, xmouse = mouse's most recent x) and is at least 1/10th of a second after the previous click.
lastUp = new Date().getTime();
var elem = document.elementFromPoint(mouseX, mouseY); //get the element under the mouse.
var url = extractUrl($(elem).css('background-image')); // function I found here: http://webdevel.blogspot.com/2009/07/jquery-quick-tip-extract-css-background.html
imgW = $("#hiddenCanvas").width(); //EVERY art file is 88px wide. thus my canvas element is set to 88px wide.
imgH = $(elem).css('height').split('p')[0]; //But they vary in height. (currently up to 200);
hiddenCanvas.clearRect(0, 0, imgW, imgH); //so only clear what is necessary.
var img = new Image();
img.src = url;
img.onload = function(){
//draw this elements image to the canvas at 0,0
hiddenCanvas.drawImage(img,0,0);
///This computes where the mouse is clicking the element.
var left = $(elem).css('left').split('p')[0]; //get this element's css absolute left.
var top = $(elem).css('top').split('p')[0];
offX = left - offsetLeft; //left minus the game rendering element's absolute left. gives us the element's position relative of document 0,0
offY = top - offsetTop;
offX = mouseX - offX; //apply the difference of the click point's x and y
offY = mouseY - offY;
var imgPixel = hiddenCanvas.getImageData(offX, offY, 1, 1); //Grab that pixel. Start at it's relative X and it's relative Y and only grab one pixel.
var opacity = imgPixel.data[3]; //get the opacity value of this pixel.
if(opacity == 0){//if that pixel is fully transparent
$(elem).hide();
var temp = document.elementFromPoint(mouseX, mouseY); //set the element right under this one
$(elem).show();
elem = temp;
}
//draw a circle on our hiddenCanvas so when it's not hidden we can see it working!
hiddenCanvas.beginPath();
hiddenCanvas.arc(offX, offY, 10, 0, Math.PI*2, true);
hiddenCanvas.closePath();
hiddenCanvas.fill();
$(elem).css("top", "+=1"); //apply something to the final element.
}
}
}
In conjunction with this:
<canvas id="hiddenCanvas" width="88" height="200"></canvas>
Set the CSS positioning absolute and x = -(width) to hide;

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