Android: How to get a custom view to redraw partially? - android

I have a custom view that fills my entire screen. (A piano keyboard)
When a user touches the key, it causes invalidate() to be called and the whole keyboard gets redrawn to show the new state with a touched key.
Currently the view is very simple, but I plan to add a bit more nice graphics. Since the whole keyboard is dynamically rendered this would make redrawing the entire keyboard more expensive.
So I thought, let's look into partial redrawing. Now I call invalidate(Rect dirty) with the correct dirty region. I set my onDraw(Canvas canvas) method to only draw the keys in the dirty region if I do indeed want a partial redraw. This results in those keys being drawn, but the rest of the keyboard is totally black/not drawn at all.
Am I wrong in expecting that calling invalidate(Rect dirty) would "cache" the current canvas, and only "allows" drawing in the dirty region?
Is there any way I can achieve what I want? (A way to "cache" the canvas and only redraw the dirty area?"

Current nice workaround is to manually cache the full canvas to a bitmap:
private void onDraw(Canvas canvas)
{
if (!initialDrawingIsPerformed)
{
this.cachedBitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(getWidth(), getHeight(),
Config.ARGB_8888); //Change to lower bitmap config if possible.
Canvas cacheCanvas = new Canvas(this.cachedBitmap);
doInitialDrawing(cacheCanvas);
canvas.drawBitmap(this.cachedBitmap, 0, 0, new Paint());
initialDrawingIsPerformed = true;
}
else
{
canvas.drawBitmap(this.cachedBitmap, 0, 0, new Paint());
doPartialRedraws(canvas);
}
}
Ofcourse, you need to store the info about what to redraw yourself and preferably not use a new Paint everytime, but that are details.
Also note: Bitmaps are quite heavy on the memory usage of your app. I had crashes when I cached a View that was used with a scroller and that was like 5 times the height of the device, since it used > 10MB memory!

To complement Peterdk's answer, you could save your operations in a Picture instead of a Bitmap.
A Bitmap will save all pixels, like
he said it could take a lot of
memory.
A Picture will save the
calls, like drawRect, drawLine, etc.
It depends of what is really heavy in your application : a lot of draw operations, a few draw operations but controlled by heavy calculations, a lot of blank/unused space (prefer Picture) etc...

Related

Android Canvas - restrict draw area

So on my canvas I have few rectangular areas where I draw different bitmaps.
Sometimes bitmaps get outside of their respective areas. I want these bitmaps to be cut off, so only the portion of bitmap inside of it's area is drawn.
I sure can calculate it manually (srcRect and dstRect)...
But isn't there a simpler solution?
I found clipBounds, but it doesn't seem to restrict drawing area in any way.
What you want is Canvas.clipRect(). You will need to know the bounds of the clipping rectangle, of course, but you don't need to worry about calculating a custom srcRect.
To use, save() the Canvas, do a single drawBitmap(), then restore() it to get your original clipping state back:
canvas.save();
canvas.clipRect(...);
canvas.drawBitmap(...);
canvas.restore();

Android: drawing on large bitmap, 2 layers, best way?

im working on an app, that displays large(around 2000x2000px) bitmap in imageview. This image has to be that large since user can pinch to zoom it in order to see some details. App has to be able to draw circles on that image, and also to display image alone, without circles on it. I was using 2 layers but the problem is memory since 2k x 2k px is around 16mb of memory, and creating another bitmap(another 16mb), just to draw a few circles, is pointless in my opinion. Is there any way, that you can draw simple primitives on image, and also be able to display it without primitives(circles in my case)?
Maybe somehow to store only modified pixels or sth?
Thanks!
You don't need to make another 2000x2000 Bitmap to draw those circles on. Just 'prerender' a circle, and then choose where you draw it.
I'm working under the assumption that you're drawing your 'big' image on a Canvas, since you have zooming features etc.
If you're not, you'll need to override your SurfaceView's onDraw(Canvas canvas) method so that you can access the SurfaceView Canvas. I won't go into depth about that part since again I'm assuming you have it, but if not the implementation of that function would look like this:
//Overriding SurfaceView onDraw(Canvas canvas)
#Override
protected void onDraw(Canvas surfaceCanvas) {
if(canvas == null) return; //No Canvas? No point in drawing then.
surfaceCanvas.drawColor(Color.BLACK);
//Draw your 'big' image on the SurfaceView Canvas
insertYourBigImageDrawingFunctionHere(surfaceCanvas);
//Now draw your circles at their correct positions...
insertCircleDrawingFunctionHere(surfaceCanvas);
}
Now that you have access to the SurfaceView Canvas, you can choose precisely how things are drawn on it. Like circles for example...
I want to draw your attention to the multiple Canvas' being used below (surfaceCanvas vs. circleCanvas). I once thought that Canvas was a kind-of 'one Canvas for the whole app/activity' implementation, but it isn't. You are free to create Canvas' as you please. It is merely an instance of a tool to draw onto Bitmaps. This was a HUGE revelation for me, and gave me much more robust control over how Bitmaps are composed.
public void myCircleDrawingFunction(Canvas surfaceCanvas){
//Make a new Bitmap for your circle
Bitmap.Config conf = Bitmap.Config.ARGB_4444;
tinyCircleBMP = Bitmap.createBitmap(10,10, conf);
//Make a new canvas using that Bitmap as the source...
Canvas circleCanvas = new Canvas(cacheBmp);
//Now, perform your drawing on the `Canvas`...
Paint p = new Paint();
circleCanvas.drawCircle(5, 5, 5, p);
//Now the `Bitmap` has a circle on it, draw the `Bitmap` on the `SufaceView Canvas`
surfaceCanvas.drawBitmap(tinyCircleBMP, 10, 10, p);
//Replace the '10's in the above function with relevant coordinates.
}
Now obviously, your circles will zoom/pan differently to your 'big' image, since they are no longer being drawn at the same size/position of the 'big' image. You will need to consider how to translate the positions of each circle taking into account the current scale and position of the 'big' image.
For example, if your image is zoomed in to 200%, and a circle is supposed to appear 100px from the left of the big image, then you should multiply the pixel values to take into account the zoom, like this
(PsuedoCode):
drawCircleAtX = Bitmap.left * BitmapZoomFactor
If you are using the canvas API (if not I would suggest to)? if so you are just draw your image on the canvas and then the primitive shapes on top of the same canvas before display. This way you just keep a reference of the circles position in some basic data types and scale them as the user moves around and zooms, so you know where to draw them each frame.

Can we hardware accelerate an off-screen canvas?

I'm creating an off-screen bitmap+canvas, drawing a bunch of smaller bitmaps into it, then drawing it into a view. The isHardwareAccelerated() method returns false for my canvas:
mBitmap = new Bitmap(500, 500, Bitmap.Config.RGB_565);
mCanvas = new Canvas(mBitmap);
mCanvas.isHardwareAccelerated(); // false
I can see that the canvas given to me in my View's onDraw() method is hardware accelerated though:
#Override
protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
super.onDraw(canvas);
canvas.isHardwareAccelerated(); // true
// My current approach, but maybe better to draw directly
// to the view's canvas if it's hardware accelerated?
canvas.drawBitmap(mBitmap, ...);
}
I'm wondering if we can turn this on for the off-screen canvas?
I'm also wondering if I should just draw directly to the view's hardware-accelerated canvas instead of bothering with the off-screen one, if it's not going to be accelerated. I thought it would be faster drawing everything to the offscreen one first.
I have to reorganize my code to test this out, just wondering if I'm missing something obvious for the off-screen one.
Thanks
------- Update -----------------------------------
I refactored my draw code to just draw directly to the view's canvas in onDraw(), instead of using the off-screen canvas. Performance is way better.
It would still be nice to enable hardware acceleration for the off-screen canvas though, there are definitely tons of use-cases for that.

Dynamically create / draw images to put in android view

I'm not sure I'm doing this the "right" way, so I'm open to other options as well. Here's what I'm trying to accomplish:
I want a view which contains a graph. The graph should be dynamically created by the app itself. The graph should be zoom-able, and will probably start out larger than the screen (800x600 or so)
I'm planning on starting out simple, just a scatter plot. Eventually, I want a scatter plot with a fit line and error bars with axis that stay on the screen while the graph is zoomed ... so that probably means three images overlaid with zoom functions tied together.
I've already built a view that can take a drawable, can use focused pinch-zoom and drag, can auto-scale images, can switch images dynamically, and takes images larger than the screen. Tying the images together shouldn't be an issue.
I can't, however, figure out how to dynamically draw simple images.
For instance: Do I get a BitMap object and draw on it pixel by pixel? I wanted to work with some of the ShapeDrawables, but it seems they can only draw a shape onto a canvas ... how then do I get a bitmap of all those shapes into my view? Or alternately, do I have to dynamically redraw /all/ of the image I want to portray in the "onDraw" routine of my view every time it moves or zooms?
I think the "perfect" solution would be to use the ShapeDrawable (or something like it to draw lines and label them) to draw the axis with the onDraw method of the view ... keep them current and at the right level ... then overlay a pre-produced image of the data points / fit curve / etc that can be zoomed and moved. That should be possible with white set to an alpha on the graph image.
PS: The graph image shouldn't actually /change/ while on the view. It's just zooming and being dragged. The axis will probably actually change with movement. So pre-producing the graph before (or immediately upon) entering the view would be optimal. But I've also noticed that scaling works really well with vector images ... which also sounds appropriate (rather than a bitmap?).
So I'm looking for some general guidance. Tried reading up on the BitMap, ShapeDrawable, Drawable, etc classes and just can't seem to find the right fit. That makes me think I'm barking up the wrong tree and someone with some more experience can point me in the right direction. Hopefully I didn't waste my time building the zoom-able view I put together yesterday :).
First off, it is never a waste of time writing code if you learned something from it. :-)
There is unfortunately still no support for drawing vector images in Android. So bitmap is what you get.
I think the bit you are missing is that you can create a Canvas any time you want to draw on a bitmap. You don't have to wait for onDraw to give you one.
So at some point (from onCreate, when data changes etc), create your own Bitmap of whatever size you want.
Here is some psuedo code (not tested)
Bitmap mGraph;
void init() {
// look at Bitmap.Config to determine config type
mGraph = new Bitmap(width, height, config);
Canvas c = new Canvas(mybits);
// use Canvas draw routines to draw your graph
}
// Then in onDraw you can draw to the on screen Canvas from your bitmap.
protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
Rect dstRect = new Rect(0,0,viewWidth, viewHeight);
Rect sourceRect = new Rect();
// do something creative here to pick the source rect from your graph bitmap
// based on zoom and pan
sourceRect.set(10,10,100,100);
// draw to the screen
canvas.drawBitmap(mGraph, sourceRect, dstRect, graphPaint);
}
Hope that helps a bit.

How to blit() in android?

I'm used to handle graphics with old-school libraries (allegro, GD, pygame), where if I want to copy a part of a bitmap into another... I just use blit.
I'm trying to figure out how to do that in android, and I got very confused.
So... we have these Canvas that are write-only, and Bitmaps that are read-only? It seems too stupid to be real, there must be something I'm missing, but I really can't figure it out.
edit: to be more precise... if bitmaps are read only, and canvas are write only, I can't blit A into B, and then B into C?
The code to copy one bitmap into another is like this:
Rect src = new Rect(0, 0, 50, 50);
Rect dst = new Rect(50, 50, 200, 200);
canvas.drawBitmap(originalBitmap, src, dst, null);
That specifies that you want to copy the top left corner (50x50) of a bitmap, and then stretch that into a 150x150 Bitmap and write it 50px offset from the top left corner of your canvas.
You can trigger drawing via invalidate() but I recommend using a SurfaceView if you're doing animation. The problem with invalidate is that it only draws once the thread goes idle, so you can't use it in a loop - it would only draw the last frame. Here are some links to other questions I've answered about graphics, they might be of use to explain what I mean.
How to draw a rectangle (empty or filled, and a few other options)
How to create a custom SurfaceView for animation
Links to the code for an app with randomly bouncing balls on the screen, also including touch control
Some more info about SurfaceView versus Invalidate()
Some difficulties with manually rotating things
In response to the comments, here is more information:
If you get the Canvas from a SurfaceHolder.lockCanvas() then I don't think you can copy the residual data that was in it into a Bitmap. But that's not what that control is for - you only use than when you've sorted everything out and you're ready to draw.
What you want to do is create a canvas that draws into a bitmap using
Canvas canvas = new Canvas(yourBitmap)
You can then do whatever transformations and drawing ops you want. yourBitmap will contain all the newest information. Then you use the surface holder like so:
Canvas someOtherCanvas = surfaceHolder.lockCanvas()
someOtherCanvas.drawBitmap(yourBitmap, ....)
That way you've always got yourBitmap which has whatever information in it you're trying to preserve.
In android you draw to the canvas, and when you want it to update you call invalidate which will the redraw this canvas to the screen. So I'm guessing you have overridden the onDraw method of your view so just add invalidate();
#Override
public void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
// Draw a bitmap to the canvas at 0,0
canvas.drawBitmap(mBitmap, 0, 0, null);
// Add in your drawing functions here
super.onDraw(canvas);
// Call invalidate to draw to screen
invalidate();
}
The above code simply redraws the bitmap constantly, of course you want to add in extra thing to draw and consider using a timing function that calls invalidate so that it is not constantly running. I'd advice having a look at the lunarlander sources.

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