I need to implement a simple plotting component in C#(WPF to be more precise). What i have is a collection of data samples containing time (X axis) and a value (both double types).
I have a drawing canvas of a fixed size (Width x Height) and a DrawLine method/function that can draw on it. The problem I am facing now is how do I draw the plot so that it is autoscaled? In other words how do I map the samples I have to actual pixels on my Width x Height canvas?
One hacky method that may work is to use a Viewbox control. This control will scale the rendering of its content to fit the size available. However, this might lead to your lines and labels looking too thick or thin.
The more sensible method that you're probably after, though, is how to work out at what scale to draw your graph at in the first place. To do that, work out the range of values on a given axis (for example, your Y-axis value might range from 0 to 100). Work out the available drawing space on that axis (for example, your canvas might have 400 pixels of height). Your Y-axis "scale factor" when drawing the graph would be <available space> / <data range> - or, in this case, 4.
Your canvas' coordinates start from zero in the top-left so, to calculate the Y-position for a given data point, you would calculate like this:
double availableSpace = 400.0; // the size of your canvas
double dataRange = 100.0; // the range of your values
double scaleFactor = availableSpace / dataRange;
double currentValue = 42.0; // the value we're trying to plot
double plottableY = availableSpace - (currentValue * scaleFactor); // the position on screen to draw at
The value of plottableY is the y-coordinate that you would use to draw this point on the canvas.
(Obviously this code would need to be spread out across your drawing method so you're not recalculating all of the values for each point, but it demonstrates the math).
Related
I am creating the "perfect" sprite packer. This is a sprite packer that makes sure the output sprite is compatible with most if not all game engines and animation software. It is a program that merges images into a horizontal sprite sheet.
It converts (if needed) the source frames to BMP in memory
It considers the top-left pixel fully transparent for the entire image (can be configured)
It parses the frames each individually to find the real coordinates rect (where the actual frame starts, ends, its width and height (sometimes images may have a lot of extra transparent pixels).
It determines the frame box, which have the width and height of the frame with the largest width/height so that it is long enough to contain every frame. (For extra compatibility, every frame must have the same dimensions).
Creates output sprite with width of nFrames * wFrameBox
The problem is - anchor alignment. Currently, it tries to align each frame so that its center is on the frame box center.
if((wBox / 2) > (frame->realCoordinates.w / 2))
{
xpos = xBoxOffset + ((wBox / 2) - (frame->realCoordinates.w / 2));
}
else
{
xpos = xBoxOffset + ((frame->realCoordinates.w / 2) - (wBox / 2));
}
When animated, it looks better with it, but there is still this inconsistent horizontal frame position so that a walking animation looks like walking and shaking.
I also tried the following:
store the real x pixel position of the widest frame and use it as a reference point:
xpos = xBoxOffset + (frame->realCoordinates.x - xRef);
It also gives a little better results, showing that this is still not the correct algorithm.
Honestly, I don't know what am I doing.
What will be the correct way to align sprite frames (obtain the appropriate x position for drawing the next frame) given that the output sprite sheet have width of the number of frames multiplied by the width of the widest frame?
Your problem is that you first calculate the center then calculate the size of the required bounding box. That is why your image 'shakes' because in each image that center is different to the original center.
You should use the center of the original bounding box as your origin, then find out the size of each sprite, keeping track of the leftmost, rightmost, topmost and bottommost non transparent pixels. That would give you the bounding box you need to use to avoid the shaking.
The problem is that you will find that most sprites are already done that way, so the original bounding box is actually defined as to the minimum space to paint the whole sprite's sequence covering these non transparent pixels.
The only way to remove unused sprite space is to store the first sprite complete, and then the origin and dimensions of each other sprite, like is done in animated GIF and APNG ( Animated PNG -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG )
I've been working on a C Mandelbrot set program for the past few days and I managed to make it work fine, however, my end goal is to be able to smoothly zoom in the set with my mouse and that's something I haven't yet been able to do yet so I might need a bit of help !
Here's part of my code (well, the full mandelbrot function) :
//removed to free space
Here's a picture of the output :
(Sorry, it's not very pretty, colors were not my priority but I'll be sure to work on them as soon as I figure out the zoom !)
Mandelbrot
What I want to be able to do :
left click -> center of the image becomes mouse_x an mouse_y. Then, it starts zooming in as long as left click is held
right click -> [...] it starts zooming out as long as right click is held
move mouse -> if currently zooming in/out, the center of the image moves to the mouse's coordinates with it. Else nothing happens.
(already have a function that gets mouse's position and button being pressed)
Thanks a lot for your help !
The visible area is a rectangle defined by (Re.min, Im.min) and (Re.max, Im.max). When you click on a particular point, you can map the mouse position to a point (mouseRe, mouseIm) by using the same mapping as you use when rendering:
double mouseRe = (double)mouse_x / (WIN_L / (e->Re.max - e->Re.min)) + e->Re.min;
double mouseIm = (double)mouse_y / (WIN_H / (e->Im.max - e->Im.min)) + e->Im.min;
To zoom in, imagine drawing a line from the (mouseRe, mouseIm) zooming centerpoint to each of the corners of the visible area, forming a lopsided X. Based on the zoom amount, find 4 new points a certain fraction of the distance along these lines, these points will give you your new rectangle. For example, if you are zooming in by a factor of 3, find a point 1/3rd of the way from the centerpoint to the corners. This will produce a new rectangle with sides 1/3rd the size of the original and an area 1/9th the size.
To do this you can define a simple interpolation function:
double interpolate(double start, double end, double interpolation)
{
return start + ((end - start) * interpolation);
}
Then use the function to find your new points:
void applyZoom(t_fractal* e, double mouseRe, double mouseIm, double zoomFactor)
{
double interpolation = 1.0 / zoomFactor;
e->Re.min = interpolate(mouseRe, e->Re.min, interpolation);
e->Im.min = interpolate(mouseIm, e->Im.min, interpolation);
e->Re.max = interpolate(mouseRe, e->Re.max, interpolation);
e->Im.max = interpolate(mouseIm, e->Im.max, interpolation);
}
Based on my description, you might think you need to find 8 values (4 points for the 4 legs of the X with 2 dimension each) but in practise there are only 4 unique values because each of the sides is axis aligned.
For a smooth zoom, call it with a zoom factor of a little over 1.0 e.g. 1.01. To zoom out, pass the inverse e.g. 1.0 / 1.01.
Alternatively, if you want the center of the view to jump to a certain position when you click the mouse, calculate mouseRe and mouseIm as above and then offset the corners of the view rectangle by the difference between these values and the center of the view rectangle. You could store these values at the time the mouse button was first pressed down, and use them to zoom in as long as it is held.
See, I'm not posting code because I need logic, math, algorithms. Well:
I'm trying to achieve a 3d-looking visual for a top-down tile map using layers and parallax scrolling. The thing is: At the moment I simply set different "speeds" for each layer. But that would only work with some very specific camera positions, also, it makes so that the blocks have virtually an infinite height (as they will "increase in height" until they are out of the camera's FOV).
Is there a better (should be) to achieve the effect? Oh, and I'm using C with Allegro 5.
I thought about limiting each layer's offset, but I have no idea how.
My current method:
That's my current code for the layer "speed" (it repeats for up, down, left and right, changing coordinates):
if (key[ALLEGRO_KEY_UP])
camera_y[0] -= 1;
camera_y[1] -= 2;
camera_y[2] -= 3;
Then I run a loop to draw the map with the tiles relative to the current layer's offset.
By the way, that's the desired effect (example with 3 layers):
For parallax scrolling, layers that scroll faster must be correspondingly larger:
You can use unscaled tiles stacked on top of each other, offset by a fixed fraction of the distance from the center of the tile to the center of the viewport,
but the tops will not be continuous (unless the bottoms overlap). If all layer tiles are hand-drawn or rendered images, this is not an issue.
If the walls are box-shaped, and you have images of the top and each of the four sides, you can draw them in almost 3D,
where at most two sides of each box wall is drawn, skewed.
In all cases:
If the center of the viewport is at world coordinates (xc, yc), point (x, y, z) maps to coordinates (x', y') relative to the center of the viewport:
x' = (x - xc) × (z + z0) / z0
y' = (y - yc) × (z + z0) / z0
where z0 is a constant that determines the "size" of the parallax or depth effect.
I think you're on the right lines, but the "infinite height" issue can be solved by simply giving the camera an "altitude" property, and adjust the "speed" of each layer by calculating ...
layer.speed = (layer.altitude / camera.altitude) * ZOOM_FACTOR; //gives a float value.
Can't really suggest anything more until you show us some of your math code.
In my WPF app, I have created few Line elements and added inside a StackPanel. The thickness for all lines is set to 0.5. But when I render it, sometimes few lines are appearing blur. I tried setting SnapsToDevicePixels in the StackPanel but this makes the lines completely invisible. Now if I increase the line thickness to 1 or greater than 1 then SnapsToDevicePixels is working properly.
I am creating Line as shown below:
private void CreateLine(Double y1, Double y2, Double x1, Double x2, Double width, Double height)
{
Line line = new Line() { Y1 = y1, Y2 = y2, X1 = x1, X2 = x2, Width = width, Height = height };
}
Here, if LineThickness is set to 0.5, x1 and x2 values will be 0.25 (LineThickenss / 2) and width is 0.5 (LineThickness).
Is there any minimum pixel value required to be set in order to make the SnapsToDevicePixels work in WPF?
I solved many of my SnapToDevicePixels issues by using UseLayoutRounding instead:
In your case:
<StackPanel UseLayoutRounding="True">
...
</StackPanel>
I don't know if this will solve your issue, but from my experience, it's worth a try!
No, there isn't a minimum per se. The blurriness you are experiencing is due to how WPf handles drawing in general. According to my experience you can't really do anything about it. Snapping to device pixels may give some reprieve, but can still be unpredictable.
Also there is a difference between a pixel and a WPF unit that makes things more complicated, though many techniques exist to translate between them.
A common approach to translating the pixel to WPF unit is:
Matrix m = PresentationSource.FromVisual(this).CompositionTarget.TransformToDevice;
double dpiFactor = 1/m.M11;
double lineThickness = dpiFactor * 1; // Repace '1' with desired pixel size.
Here is a useful article on the topic:
http://www.wpftutorial.net/DrawOnPhysicalDevicePixels.html
It is not recommended to set fractional positions.
What means the half of WPF point?
WPF will interpret 1 point as 1/96 inch. It differs in pixels for distinct monitors (96 DPI, 300 DPI).
WPF considers 1 point as 1 pixel in the usual monitors with 96 DPI. And
UIElement.SnapsToDevicePixels works great. It tries to snap 0.5 pixel to the monitor grid. There are two results: enlarged version two one pixel or shortened version to 0 pixel (disappears).
If for some reason there is a need for exact 1 pixel (not 1 point) positioning then use GuidelineSet.
With .NET 4 or higher it is better to use Layout Rounding. It calculates pixel offsets at the UI position measuring level. While SnapsToDevicePixels works at the render level. The minus for Layout Rounding is that it is bad for dynamic moving.
I'm writing a 2D game using OpenGL. When I want to blit part of a texture as a sprite I use glTexCoord2f(u, v) to specify the UV co-ordinates, with u and v calculated like this:
GLfloat u = (GLfloat)xpos_in_texture/(GLfloat)width_of_texture;
GLfloat v = (GLfloat)ypos_in_texture/(GLfloat)height_of_texture;
This works perfectly most of the time, except when I use glScale to zoom the game in or out. Then floating point rounding errors cause some pixels to be drawn one to the right of or one below the intended rectangle within the texture.
What can be done about this? At the moment I'm subtracting an 'epsilon' value from the right and bottom edges of the rectangle, and it seems to work but this seems like a horrible kludge. Are there any better solutions?
Your issue is most likely not coming from rounding errors, but a misunderstanding on how OpenGL maps texels to pixels. If you notice off-by-one errors, it's probably because your UVs, your vertex positions or your projection matrix/viewport pair are not aligned to where they ought to be.
To simplify, I'll just talk about 1D, and be assuming you use a projection and a viewport that map X,Y coordinates to the equivalent pixel location (i.e. a glOrtho(0,width,0,height,zmin,zmax) and a glViewport(0,width,0,height).
Say you want to draw 5 texels (starting at 0 for simplicity) of your 64-wide texture showing on the 10 pixels (scale of 2) of your screen starting at pixel 20.
To get there, draw the triangle with X coordinates 20 and 30, and U (of the UV pair) of 10/64 and 15/64. The rasterization of OpenGL will generate 10 pixels to shade, with X coordinates 20.5, 21.5, ... 29.5. Note that the positions are not full integers. OpenGL rasterizes in the middle of the pixel.
Likewise, it will generate U coordinates of 10.25/64, 10.75/64, 11.25/64, 11.75/64 ... 14.25/64, 14.75/64. Note again that texel coordinates, brought back to texel positions in the texture space, are not full integers. OpenGL samples from the middle of texel locations, so this is fine.
How the samplers use these UVs to generate texel values depend on filtering modes, but be it nearest or linear, the pixels should be contained solely inside the texels of interest (0.25 with a size of 0.5 should only use color from 0 to 0.5, which is all inside the first texel).
In general, if you follow the general principles I laid out, you should never see artifacts.
Use Ortho and Viewport of exactly your frame buffer size
Use positions of X, X+width exactly
Use UVs that correspond to exactly the texels you want (if you want the 10 texels starting from the texel 0, use U=0 to U=10.
If you ever have a -1 somewhere in your math, it's likely not correct (for position or UVs).
To get back to your example, it's unclear how you link the uvs you compute to positions (since you don't show the position computation).
It's also unclear how you got xpos_in_texture (you should explain how you computed them for the corners of your sprite). My guess is that you computed that wrong.
A bit late, but for posterity I was having the same problem, with the pixels from adjacent regions of a texture atlas bleeding into sprites/tiles when scaling or zooming the view. I had my glOrtho, glViewport, etc dimensions all set correctly, then I realized the problem was I was scaling the view before translating the camera, which meant that even though I was snapping to integer pixels pre-zoom, after the zoom it would align to a fraction of a pixel and introduce the texel problem.
So if your code looks something like this, where camera.zoom is a non-integer (i.e. 0.75):
glScalef(camera.zoom, camera.zoom, 1.0f);
glTranslatef(camera.x, camera.y, 0.0f);
You'll want to make sure the result of the translation after scaling aligns to whole pixels on the screen, so you can do something like:
glScalef(camera.zoom, camera.zoom, 1.0f);
glTranslatef(
floor(camera.x * camera.zoom) / camera.zoom,
floor(camera.y * camera.zoom) / camera.zoom,
0.0f);
Do the division as a double, round the result down yourself to the desired level of precision, then cast it to GLFloat.
Your xpos/ypos must be based on 0 to (width or height) - 1 and then:
GLfloat u = (GLfloat)xpos_in_texture/(GLfloat)(width_of_texture - 1);
GLfloat v = (GLfloat)ypos_in_texture/(GLfloat)(height_of_texture - 1);