RadialGradient – Gradients

In a recent series of posts for the MidiPad app, there was a discussion regarding the use of a RadialGradiant to render each PadView and, for aesthetic reasons, this was done using a software layer rather than a hardware layer. In this concluding article we’ll explore a way of adapting things to use a hardware…

RadialGradient – Layers

In a recent series of posts for the MidiPad app, there was a discussion regarding the use of a RadialGradiant to render each PadView and, for aesthetic reasons, this was done using a software layer rather than a hardware layer. In this short series we’ll first take a look at what the differences are, and…

Irregular Shapes – Part 4

Previously in this series we’ve looked at how to display images with irregular outlines, beginning with simply rounding the corners, but also displaying them in a speech bubble. In this final article of the series we’ll look at displaying an image with a love heart outline.

Irregular Shapes – Part 3

In the previous articles in this series, we’ve looked at two different approaches for creating an image with rounded corners. In this article, we’ll look at creating a speech bubble effect, similar to those used in some messaging apps such as WhatsApp.

Irregular Shapes – Part 2

In the previous article we looked at how we can use an alpha mask to create a round cornered image, although there were a couple of reasons why it wasn’t entirely suitable for our requirements. In this article we’ll look at an alternative mechanism for achieving the same result but without using a second image.

Irregular Shapes – Part 1

A little while ago I was asked about how to create images with irregularly shaped outlines such as those in WhatsApp which are shaped like a speech bubble. In this series we’ll look at some techniques for doing precisely that.

Blurring Images – Part 7

In the previous article we performed some simple optimisations which enormously improved the frame rate of our animations. However, we mentioned that increasing the size of the area that we wish to blur will slow the frame rate because the complexity of the blur operation will increase exponentially. In this article we’ll look at an…

Blurring Images – Part 6

In the previous article we looked at frame rates, and explored how we can measure them by adding some simple benchmarking logging. In this article we’ll look at implementing our dynamic blurring so that we can animate things, and optimising things to improve our framerate.

Gradient Text

Recently there was a comment on the article on Text Shadows asking how to fill text with a gradient. In this article we’ll look at a simple technique for doing precisely that.