I am using SetPixel(GetDC(0),x,y,color) to write on the screen but as I do that, some other program updates it's screen and overwrites my drawn pixel thus the image drawn on screen appear to sparkle.
How Can I avoid this and draw something on the screen without the fear that it will be overwritten?
The screen is a shared resource. If you want something that is exclusively yours, create a window and draw into that.
Related
I'm trying to do something like what Auslogics Disk Defrag does with its custom window:
As can be seen, the blurred semi transparent shadow surrounding the window is much darker than the standard one, so the program must be drawing it by itself. The problem is, I can't find a way to paint anything transparent around a window.
In an answer to a similiar question, someone suggested creating a slightly bigger transparent window (using WS_EX_LAYERED + SetLayeredWindowAttributes()) behind the actual application window, and then do the translucent drawing on the transparent one. Not only does it sound like an ugly hack, it doesn't actually work. If, for example, one tries to draw a semi transparent black rectangle on a transparent window via GDI+, alpha blending is applied to the shape's color over the window background color (which would also be the transparency color) and then the shape is drawn with the calculated color, which obviously is not the window transparency, resulting in an opaque rectangle.
The semi transparent shadow is actually done by Gaussian Blur of the black square.
You can use this effect to create glows and drop shadows and use the
composite effect to apply the result to the original image. It is
useful in photo processing for filters like highlights and shadows.
You can use the output of this effect for input into lighting effects,
like the Specular Lighting or Diffuse Lighting effects, because the
alpha channel is blurred, too and lighting effects use the alpha
channel to determine surface geometry as a height map.
This effect is used by the built-in Shadow effect.
Refer: Gaussian blur effect
Then remove the standard frame, the entire window is your client area, so you can draw shadow in the extended frame.
Refer: Drawing in the Extended Frame Window
I think I've found a solution that works for me. I was hoping I wouldn't have to create an extra window just for the shadow, but every method I could find or think of would require me to draw all the controls by myself and/or somehow correct their alpha values.
So, I'm using a layered window with per pixel alpha. I paint over it with Direct2D, or, alternatively, I use some PNGs with transparency for the edges and corners of the shadow and copy them on a memory DC. Either way I simply recreate the shadow with the right dimensions when the window is resized, and call UpdateLayeredWindowIndirect. Both methods seem to be working well on Windows 7 and 10, and so far I haven't found any glitches.
Preventing it from showing on the taskbar was a bit tricky. All the ways I know have drawbacks. What worked best for me was making the layered window owned by the main one. At least that way it will only be visible on the desktop where the program is actually running, unlike other alternatives which would force it to show on every virtual desktop. Finally, because I disable that window, I interact with it by processing WM_SETCURSOR.
I've inherited a project which renders a 3D scene directly to the window using OpenGL. The code works fine, but we're now drawing an icon onto the 3D view to "Exit 3D view mode". This also works fine, but results in a lot of flickering as the view is rapidly rotated.
I'd like to be able to draw to an off-screen bitmap (ie. without a HWND), then draw my icon to the bitmap, then finally StretchBlt the bitmap to the window using double-buffering. We do this in other contexts (such as zooming into an image which does not need OpenGL) and it works great. My problem is that I am an OpenGL novice and all attempts at starting with the DC of the off-screen bitmap and creating a HWND from this DC fail, usually because of selecting a pixel format for the DC.
There are a few questions asking similar things here on StackOverflow (eg. this question without an accepted answer. Is this possible ? If so is there a relatively straightforward tutorial describing the procedure? If the process is extremely complex requiring detailed OpenGL knowledge, then I may just have to leave it and live with the flickering because it is a rarely used mode in our software.
Just draw the Icon using OpenGL using a textured quad.
All this draw to a bitmap copy to DC StretchBlt involves several roundtrips from and to graphics memory (wastes bandwidth) and StretchBlt will likely not be GPU accelerated. All in all what you want to do is inefficient and may even reduce quality.
I presume you have the icon stored in your executable as a resource. The most simple way to go about it is to create a memory DC (CreateCompatibleDC) with a DIBSECTION (CreateDIBSection), draw the icon to that and load the DIBSECTION data into a OpenGL texture. Then to draw the icon use glViewport to select the destination rectangle in window coordinates, use an identity transform to draw a rectangle covering the whole viewport (position values (-1,1)→(1,1), texture coordinate values (0,0)→(1,1) gives you the right outcome).
Important side fix: In case your program does silly things like setting viewport and the fixed function pipeline GL_PROJECTION matrix in a window resize handler you should clean up that anti pattern and move this to where it belongs: In the drawing code.
I am a newbie with OpenGL. I need to draw a line with it. I browsed the web and found this code:
glBegin(GL_LINES);
glVertex2f(.25,0.25);
glVertex2f(.75,.75);
glEnd();
However, I don't see any line. The consoler appears only for some milliseconds. I need a program that will draw a line and at least visible for some moments.
Thanks in advance.
Bevor you can draw something, you first need some canvas to draw upon. That's be a window with a pixel framebuffer; without doing extra effort you don't have such.
So first step is to create a window which you can draw into, that gives you the canvas.
Next you need the actual pens to draw with. That would be a OpenGL context you have to create and connect with the window.
Only after you did that you can actually ask OpenGL to draw some line. If you just call the drawing commands, there's nothing going to happen, because you neither have the canvas to draw to, nor the pen to draw with.
I have a game I'm currently working on, and it uses multiple views (for a minimap for example).
Thing is, I would like to have a fading effect added at some point, so I thought I'd create a black image that is the size of the screen and change its alpha value with a timer. That part is not a problem.
What happens right now is the main area (ie window default view) is fading (because the opacity of the image is increasing), but the minimap (minimap view) is unaffected. This is normal behaviour for views, but is there a way to draw an image to the whole window, regardless of the views ?
Thanks in advance
To clarify, you have the default view where you'll draw the main game, then you'll have the minimap view where you would draw the minimap. At some point in the game you want the whole screen to fade to black. It sounds like you've been trying to draw a black image on the default view (changing the alpha) to make this effect work.
So, you need a third view that you draw your black image on to get this fading effect.
I have to display an image and text overlay, when text overlay contains many strings, but only one changes from frame to frame. I want to avoid redraw of the entire overlay and only update what has changed.
I tried wglCreateLayerContext but my GPU seems to not support it (PIXELFORMATDESCRIPTOR bReserved is 0).
What is the most efficient way to redraw only part of text overlay?
Redrawing the whole framebuffer is the canonical way in OpenGL. You can use Framebuffer Objects (FBO) to create several off-screen drawing surfaces, to which you render the individual layers. Then you composit the layers into a composite image presented on screen.
but only one changes from frame to frame. I want to avoid redraw of the entire overlay
Why? Figuring out what parts need redraw, masking them, do only a partial clear, updating it, etc. takes more time and effort than to simply redraw the whole text overlay.