I'm trying to work out a way to animate a series of circles that when they get close to each other, they melt into each other like blobs or liquid metal. Similar to the animation below.
I've searched for a few hours online for algorithms that might go part the way toward doing this, but the closest i've gotten is using blur functions to kind of fake it. I'm looking for a way to draw the objects entirely with curves.
Related
After Effect has the possibility to apply the a Bezier Surface over an image.
However we want to achieve that affect with AS3.
We can use DisplacementMapFilter, using a mapBitmap for each frame for the bezier effect..
How can we generate each of those bitmaps?
The only information that after effect gives are the 12 control points for 12 key frames each one.
How can we with that information generate those mapBitmap that the DisplacementMapFilter operation requests?
Maybe after effect has another information that we are missing?
Thanks in advance.
I'm asuming you're trying to come up with something like this: http://fatlinesofcode.philipandrews.org/2011/02/20/warping-bitmaps-with-a-bezier-surface/
Displacement map filter has limitations that would make this difficult.
The trick is to break up the image into triangles and warp these triangles along the bezier lines/surface you like. The more triangles you use the smoother the resulting image.
this is a good place to start : http://www.flashandmath.com/advanced/p10triangles/index.html
here is a more advanced example (without code) http://www.miaumiau.cat/2010/03/simple-surface-editor/ that is using bezier curves
more code here also: http://wonderfl.net/c/rFOlY
you can try looking up more resources with drawTriangles and distort keywords
I am implementing free drawing with HTML5 canvas. Currently every thing is working fine. I am using moveTo() and lineTo() for every mousemove. I have to fine tune the drawing;
when I draw some curve like lines with rapid movements, the drawing will be drawn like joints of straight lines. Is there any alternative way for drawing, to make the drawing smoother?
I dont think there is a better way for the drawing itself, however, if you put the draw functions directly onto the mouse move event handlers, then that would slow it down,
To speed that up you could just save the coordinates in an array in the event handlers and wait for the mouse to stop moving before walking trough the array and drawing.
The advantage would be that the events are called more reapidly, making smoother curves, the disadvantge would be that there is a 'lag' if you move the mouse alot.
An alternative would be to try and detect when the user curves and use the appropiate curve drawing method.
I actually did the same thing:
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.moveTo(lp.x-.5, lp.y-.5); // Last recorded position.
ctx.lineTo(cp.x-.5, cp.y-.5); // Current position at time of call.
ctx.stroke();
Bezier Curves are great for pen-like (paths) functionality, but I've ended up with unintended results with that as well, namely the curve between P0 and P2 being too distant from P1... This can be handled by adding extra points against which to evaluate the function (taking it to higher degrees, which seems to be how adobe does it).
I've spent two days answering this question, doing a lot of research of the best examples, tearing through code where available. There are essentially two responses:
1.) Apply a filter – a box- or gaussian- blur will smooth the rough edges a little, making it look less angular.
2.) Apply a Bezier Curve – Between the mousedown and mouseup events, log an array of the points and apply the curve. The longer the line, the slower the re-rendering.(Muro - deviantArt's canvas app appears to do this). [NB: If the idea is to create an artistic web app for people to draw on, show them the original line until the smooth rendering is complete.]
I like somewhere in between, personally. A slight blur tends to soften things, especially near corners, and makes slowly placed (thus frequent, shorter lines) much softer).
Something I'll add, which may be completely obvious so I apologize: Make sure you've set your cap style to 'round' –– ctx.lineCap = 'round'
Are there any libraries out there that provide some limited functionality for primitive shapes. I tried getting my feet wet with EaselJS and although it has some amazing properties, basic shapes is not one of them. Tests for inside a shape are carried out by pixel testing which is incredibly slow compared to for example ray testing.
I imagine the rectangle and the circle gets used the most, and I can create collision detection for the two of them, but things get more complicated with polygons. Are there any libraries out there for this? I know JQuery has one, but it seems like it is for HTML elements and not the canvas
You might want to take a look at CAKE
or processingjs. I'm not sure if these are particuarly suited to your needs, but they seem the most developed library's for canvas at the moment.
I am trying to generate some sun 'rays' which I can best describe as looking like the blade of a krisknife, such as the blade portion of this picture.
This is just an example. I only need a triangular shape with two or three waves that I can close and fill.
Better yet, is there some HTML5 app with which I can draw a complex figure and then export the javascript (moveTo, arcTo, bezierCurveTo, quadraticCurveTo, ...). Something similar to HTML5 Bezier Sketcher but which saves the javascript. Trying to draw complex figures blind is very difficult and I don't want to switch to SVG if it is not necessary.
Thanks 1,000,000
Edit: I have now also looked at all the options at this site. None will allow me to draw and fill simple curves and then see/save canvs commands. All that show commands show them in new libraries like fabric or jsDraw2D.
You can parse SVG into an html5 canvas with fabric.js.
That might do the trick for you.
https://github.com/kangax/fabric.js
Beside SVG it can help you with a nice API to canvas drawing.
I found the answer among the solutions for Convert SVG to Canvas friendly output. The author didn't think it worked for him, but I think it's as perfect as any I have seen.
Professor Cloud (...is frikkin' amazing! This isn't the first thing he's done I have found incredibly useful.) created a site to take SVG input and product Canvas output. You can see it here, at Professor Cloud SVG-to-Canvas.
Using this site, I can draw something or even take a stock vector image in AI, export as SVG, cut out the commands and past them into Prof. Clouds amazing SVG-chipper, and get Canvas code. I understand it doesn't support full SVG capabilities, but then, neither does Canvas. Great for me.
Your solution is probably best but just for the record, I tried experimenting with some graph plotting, and got some nice results:
The equations are:
sin(x)*log(2/x) + x/10
sin(x)*log(2/x) - x/10
You can plot them using: http://www.graphsketch.com/
It looks good with 0 < x < 25
Ok, so I'll try to be as descriptive as possible.
I'm working on a project for a client that requires a jibjab-style masking feature of an uploaded image.
I would like to be able to generate a database-storable object that contains anchor/control positions of a bezier shape, so I can pull it out later and re-mask the object. This all is pretty easy to do, except for one catch : I need to create the bezier object from a user-drawn outline.
So far, here's how I imagine the process going:
on mouse down, create a new sprite, beginFill, and moveTo mouse position.
on mouse move, lineTo an XY coordinate.
on mouse up, endFill.
This all works just great. I could just store the info here, but I would be looking at a GIGANTIC object full of tons of pretty useless x/y coordinates, and no way to really make fine-tuning changes outside of putting handles on every pixel. (I may as well give the end user a pencil tool...)
Here's what I'm thinking as far as bezier curve calculation goes :
1: Figure out when I need to start a new curve, and track the xy of the pixel on this interval. I'm imagining this being just a pixel count, maybe just increment a count variable per mouse move and make a new one every x pixels. The issue here is some curves would be inaccurate, and others unnecessary, but I really just need a general area, not an exact representation, so it could work. I'd be happier with something a little smarter though.
2: take each new x/y, store it as an anchor, and figure out where a control would go to make the line curve between this and the last anchor. this is where I get really hung up. I'm sure someone has done this in flash, but no amount of googling can seem to help me out with the way to get this done. I've done a lot of sketching and what little math I can wrap my brain around, but can't seem to figure out a way of converting pixels to beziers.
Is this possible? All I really need is something that will get close to the same shape. I'm thinking about maybe only placing anchors when the angle of the next pixel is beyond 180 degrees in relation to the current line or something, and just grabbing the edge of the arc between these changes, but no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to figure out how to get this working!
Thanks for your help, I'll be sure to post my progress here as I go, I think this could be really useful in many applications, as long as it's actually feasible...
Jesse
It sounds like a lot of work to turn pixels into Bezier curves. You could try using something like the Linear least squares algorithm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_least_squares
A different tact, could you have your users draw vector graphics instead? That way you can just store the shapes in the database.
Another cool method of converting raster to vector would be something like this iterative program: http://rogeralsing.com/2008/12/07/genetic-programming-evolution-of-mona-lisa/
Good luck
In my answer to this question I discuss using autotrace to convert bitmaps to beziers. I recommend passing your user drawing through this program on the server. Autotrace does a fantastic job of tracing and simplifying so there is no need to try and reinvent the wheel here.
Thanks for the answers, although I guess I probably should be more specific about the application, I'm really only needing an outline for a mask, so converting images to vectors or polygons, despite how cool that is, doesn't really fix my issue. The linear least squares algorithm is mega cool, I think this might be closer to what I'm looking for.
I have a basic workaround going right now, I'm just counting mouse moves, then every X (playing with it to get most desirable curve) moves, I grab the xy position. then, I take every other stored xy, and turn it into an anchor, the remaining xys are turned into controls. This is producing somewhat desirable results, but has some minor issues, in that the speed at which the mask is drawn effects the number of handles, and it's really just getting a general area, not a precise fit.
Interestingly, users seem to draw slower for more precise shapes, so this solution works a lot better than I had imagined, but it's not as nice as it could be. This will work for the client, so although there's no reason to pursue it further, I like learning new things, and will spend some off the clock time looking into linear least equations and seeing if I can drum up a class that will do these computations for me. If anyone runs across some AS3 code for this type of thing, or would like some of mine, let me know, this is an interesting puzzle.