AS3 - Autocrop Technique? - actionscript-3

I'd like to know if anybody knows of a good and preferably quick technique for auto cropping images (i.e. BitmapDatas), similar to how GIMP does it? This basically means cropping an image to remove as much unnecessary background as possible, so that all you have left is a rectangle which contains the actual image.

Have a look at BitmapData's getColorBoundsRect() method which does that for you if you pass the correct arguments.
Also have a look at PlasticSturgeon's excellent article explaining to use the function.

Related

Add glow to Image (Actor) in LibGDX

Is it possible to add a glow to the outline of an Image? I know I can do this by adding an additional "glowed" version of the image and switching to it when desired, but since there are many different shapes in my game, I would prefer the glow to be done programmatically. How can I do this?
As #Metaphore mentioned, shaders are indeed the best option I found. I've succeeded in adding an outline to any desired image in my game by following this article and by getting crucial information from asking a follow up question.
The only way to do this is to use your own pixel shader when drawing this particular image.
You can find a lot of glow effect shaders on the net and there are may tutorials how to use them as well. You may check official LibGDX article on this topic https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki/Shaders
However, I'd not recommend you follow that way, because using different shaders for drawing single images will make you render cycle code much more complicated and less optimal. So either you will compromise on it, or just find easier way to achieve such behavior without shaders (I mean draw it statically somehow).

Perspective image transformation in Flex

What the best way to make this kind of transformation: I have 4 pairs of coordinates, and I need to put the corners of my image exactly to them?
Like in photoshop, when you in free transform mode and moving corners of the image while holding ctrl.
Something like that.
If you can use the Flash 10 drawTriangles() method, then this link will provide you with a great explanation of what you are trying to do, with some well documented functioning code. The code is very similar to the solution that romamik provided, however, you will need to calculate the correct t value of the uvtData to get it to render correctly:
To summarize from that link:
Calculate the center point of the rectangle you are trying to draw
Get the distance between each point and the center
Calculate the ratio between the diagonals
use the formula (1/point_distance)*ratio to calculate perspective distortion for each point -- project into a faux 3d space (aka "magic" as the author of the post calls it)
That should produce the effect you are looking for.
If you can't use drawTriangles() then this link provides an alternative, however it wont produce as good of results as the drawTriangles() method.
You can use graphics.drawTriangles.
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/dev/WS84753F1C-5ABE-40b1-A2E4-07D7349976C4.html
This code should do what you need (untested)
graphics.beginBitmapFill(bitmapData);
graphics.drawTriangles(
Vector.<Number>([10,10, 100,10, 10,100, 100,100]),
Vector.<int>([0,1,2, 1,3,2]),
Vector.<Number>([0,0, 1,0, 0,1, 1,1])
);
You can use the DistortImage class ported from the old 3D engine Sandy. A cleaner way would be the make use of rotateX and rotateY but it would require some mathematical pain!

Circle mask on html

I'd like to circle mask the following:
See on maphttp://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/sinan.map-l9wtmm6y.html#15/41.00996511838453/28.974809646606428'>
I checked the previous topics but since I am very new to html I couldn't find the answer.
appreciate your helps.
It would depend on how you want to go about it, the simplest and unfortunately the least robust route would be to create a large .png with the alpha in the center transparent.
There are also ways to do it using html5 canvas, CSS3, etc. but I think the more important question is what you are trying to do with it before you decide the route to take. (do you need it to resize, do you need it to change colors, etc.) Here is a link to another stack overflow post that may get you on your way.
Best way to mask an image in HTML5

How can I wrap text around a non rectangular image?

Is it possible to wrap text around a non rectangular image?
I want text around maps of different countries to wrap around the country's shape in such a way that the text always keeps the same distance from the country's border even though the border itself isn't straight.
Is this possible?
You can use this method, where you float divs to block off the shape's area.
So - the answer is "Yes - it can be done". But as far as I know there's no "easy" way like a CSS "text-wrap" option.
It looks like that kind of support is on the horizon.
As Dave said, there is CSSTextWrapper, which is probably the best way to do it at the moment, but a relatively recent W3C working draft outlines a method to use more complex shapes using SVGs, and perhaps raster images with outline detection.
How long it will take for it to be implemented in major browsers, let alone finished, is anyone's guess.
At the moment, it can be done, with difficulty. With luck, it will be much easier in the future.
There's a jQuery plugin called Bagon designed to do exactly this.
As others have already said: yes, it's possible... but it's not so difficult.
Customers tend to like this kind or wrapping, at the end I made a script for it: http://www.miguel-svq.com/textwrap.html
This can use floating divs or slice the image, as you prefer.
There's the well-supported shape-outside CSS property. You can even just give it the PNG and it'll figure out the shape from the alpha channel.

How to mark up speedometer/gauge in HTML/CSS?

As a front-end developer, I've been given a mock-up design to implement. This design features several tachograph-style icons, which have me stumped as to the best way to mark them up in HTML and CSS.
The images look like the following:
Obviously these assets represent the empty state and the full state respectively.
My issue is this: how can I mark-up these images so that I can show varying levels of completion, i.e. 10% full, 60% full etc?
Waiting in anticipation to hear your answers.
I would seriously recommend looking into the Raphael javascript library. You can knock something like this up in just a few lines of code.
See also this question: Drawing a half gauge/speedometer (JavaScript Canvas or Java Swing Example needed) where I gave an answer including a four-line code sample using Raphael, which provides an animated fuel gauge. You'll need to tweak it for your design, but even then it's only going to be a few lines of code.
The great thing about using Raphael to draw things like this is that it is fully compatible with older browsers, even IE (as far back as IE6 if you need it), without you having to do any special code to support it. It's a great little library.
Hope that helps.
Given that the image reprisents actual data and isn't purely a design mechanism, I'd mark the image up as an HTML image.
<img ... alt="10%">
If your concern is about showing portions of the image, one way you could do this would be to set the image as a background to some container and use width and height to identify the amount of the image to show.
i'm not an expert on html5 /css3, but would you not use the html5 arc command to create a mask to reveal the full state.
As you have a 270 degree rotation from empty to full, you'd just map the value as percentage of 270 to create the value of the arc that would mask the appropriate value.
I believe that there is a java script Math.PI that might help to.