AS3: Random Point on Irregular Shape - actionscript-3

Question

I have a MovieClip holding an irregular shape such as this one:
I need to generate a random point on this shape.
I can use brute force by generating points within the bounding box and then hitTesting to see if they reside on the irregular shape. However, I'm sure there's a more efficient way to tackle this problem.
What is the most efficient way to generate a random point on an irregular shape?

Answer 1

You mentioned hitTest, but I assume you meant hitTestPoint().
If so, a function go get the random points you mention, would look a bit like this:
function getRandomPointsInClip(target:MovieClip,numPoints:int):Vector.<Point>{
var points:Vector.<Point> = new Vector.<Point>(numPoints,true);
var width:Number = target.width,height:Number = target.height;
for(var i:int = 0; i < numPoints ; i++){
var point:Point = new Point(target.x+Math.random() * width,target.y+Math.random() * height);
if(target.hitTestPoint(point.x,point.y,true)) points[i] = point;//is the random coord inside ?
else i = i-1;//nope, go back one step - > retry above until it is inside
}
return points;
}
The other I hinted at in my comment involves looping through non transparent pixels in a bitmap data of your object. This method would insure you don't have many duplicates, as opposed to the previous method, but it also means, you have less control over the number of points created and there's extra memory used for creating the bitmap. Still, for documentation purposes, here is the function:
function getGridPointsInClip(target:MovieClip,res:int,offset:Number = 3):Vector.<Point>{
var points:Vector.<Point> = new Vector.<Point>();
var x:int,y:int,alpha:int,w:int = int(target.width),h:int = int(target.height);
var bmd:BitmapData = new BitmapData(w,h,true,0x00FFFFFF);bmd.draw(target);
var pixels:Vector.<uint> = bmd.getVector(bmd.rect),numPixels:int = w*h;
for(var i:int = 0; i < numPixels; i+=res) {
x = i%bmd.width;
y = int(i/bmd.width);
alpha = pixels[i] >>> 24;
if(alpha > 0) points.push(new Point(x+random(-offset,offset),y+random(-offset,offset)));
}
return points;
}
function random(from:Number,to:Number):Number {
if (from >= to) return from;
var diff:Number = to - from;
return (Math.random()*diff) + from;
}
And here'a very basic test:
var pts:Vector.<Point> = getRandomPointsInClip(mc,300);
//var pts:Vector.<Point> = getGridPointsInClip(mc,100,4);
for(var i:int = 0 ; i < pts.length; i++) drawCircle(pts[i].x,pts[i].y,3,0x009900);
function getRandomPointsInClip(target:MovieClip,numPoints:int):Vector.<Point>{
var points:Vector.<Point> = new Vector.<Point>(numPoints,true);
var width:Number = target.width,height:Number = target.height;
for(var i:int = 0; i < numPoints ; i++){
var point:Point = new Point(target.x+Math.random() * width,target.y+Math.random() * height);
if(target.hitTestPoint(point.x,point.y,true)) points[i] = point;//is the random coord inside ?
else i = i-1;//nope, go back one step - > retry above until it is inside
}
return points;
}
function getGridPointsInClip(target:MovieClip,res:int,offset:Number = 3):Vector.<Point>{
var points:Vector.<Point> = new Vector.<Point>();
var x:int,y:int,alpha:int,w:int = int(target.width),h:int = int(target.height);
var bmd:BitmapData = new BitmapData(w,h,true,0x00FFFFFF);bmd.draw(target);
var pixels:Vector.<uint> = bmd.getVector(bmd.rect),numPixels:int = w*h;
for(var i:int = 0; i < numPixels; i+=res) {
x = i%bmd.width;
y = int(i/bmd.width);
alpha = pixels[i] >>> 24;
if(alpha > 0) points.push(new Point(x+random(-offset,offset),y+random(-offset,offset)));
}
return points;
}
function random(from:Number,to:Number):Number {
if (from >= to) return from;
var diff:Number = to - from;
return (Math.random()*diff) + from;
}
function drawCircle(x:Number,y:Number,radius:Number,color:uint):void{
graphics.lineStyle(1,color);
graphics.drawCircle(x-radius,y-radius,radius);
}
HTH

Answer 2

If you think of some non-blob like shapes, it's clear the check random pixel, try again method isn't really a good way. The bounding box area could be huge compared to the shape area.
What you could do to improve the effectiveness is getting a vector of the BitmapData of the shape. It should contain all pixels of the bounding box. Update - it would be nice now if we could pick a random point, and remove it from the vector if it isn't inside the shape. Unfortunately the vector only contains the pixels' colour, not the position which is implicit and only correct if we don't change the vector's length. Since we don't need to know the actual colour, we can omit all transparent pixels and store an inside pixel's position as it's value in the vector. This way we don't need to create a new object for each pixel of the shape (that would be quite expensive!).
var v:Vector.<uint> shapeBoxBitmap.getVector(shapeBoxBitmap.rect);
var pixelNum:int = v.length;
for(var i:uint = 0; i < pixelNum; i++) {
if( v[i] && 0xFF000000 == 0) { // transparent pixel, outside off shape
v.splice(i,1);
} else {
v[i] = i;
}
}
//get random point
var randomPixel:int = v[Math.floor(Math.random()*v.length)];
var point:Point = new Point(randomPixel%shapeBitmap.width,int(randomPixel/shapeBitmap.width));