I am working on a iOS 5 iPhone project where users can choose an image on their device, then trace an object inside of the picture (trace an apple out of a picture of a fruit basket), and then the picture needs to be uploaded with the "tagged" object so it can be pulled down later. Other people will then pull down the image and try to find where the tagged object is in the picture (Think "Where's Waldo?").
I have been trying to figure out the best way of tracing the object. Before, I had a user press the top left, top right, bottom left, and bottom right points around the object and create a square view around the object. The info for that view was uploaded and then pulled down for the user to find the object. The downside is that all objects are obviously not squares/rectangles so I need to do a free form shape.
I was thinking of allowing the user to draw over the object and then somehow I need to be able to tell what is inside of the trace (For example, inside of a circle that they traced), but a problem I forsee is making sure the trace they made is closed so I can fill in the shape (which is a whole not problem).
Any advice welcome on the best way of starting this.
Thanks!
UIBezierPath might be a very useful friend here. It allows you to create any shape you need, and it supports both drawing and hit-detection. I recently did an implementation for a storybook where I could trace out a shape with their finger, freeze it, and then use the shape for tap detection.
The basic idea is this:
When your finger touches the screen, start recording positions. Discard any positions that are too close to the previous position (eg, only record a point if it is >min-distance from the last recorded point). While doing this, you can draw the UIBezierPath so you can see what you are tracing out. Modify the UIBezierPath by adding points to it, instead of recreating it every time.* When you lift your finger, close the bezier path. Quite simple.
Now, this will result in a polygon (ie, straight edges). If your min-distance is low enough or if you are using it for hit-detection (as you say), it won't really matter. However, if you want to smooth the path, you have to use the curve-to methods, which slightly complicate it - but should you wish to follow up on this more, read up on splines and spline generation from a point series.
*note: otherwise you'll get lag while drawing large shapes because recreating a bezier path from an increasingly large series of points gets expensive. Modifying the existing path makes it much, much, much faster.
Related
Im planning to make a domino draw game but im not quite sure how to handle the tile placement so that each tile snaps to each value when a player sets a domino, could any one give me an idea on how to achive this?
Example image
This question is probably too broad. You really need to make an attempt at implementing a solution yourself and then come back if you run into a specific problem. However, if you really have no idea where to begin, you broadly need to do a few things:
Create a GameObjects for your dominoes and attach a scripts to the,
which define their numbers, set their corresponding texture etc.
Create an invisible play surface which is made up of a grid representing places where tiles can be put down.
Add code to handle picking up, moving and putting down your dominoes.
In the code that handles moving and/or putting down dominoes:
check whether the grid location where the domino is going to be placed is valid (e.g adjacent to another domino),
then check adjacent grid domino values
For adjacent dominoes, check their orientation
depending on the orientation relative to the domino you are placing, check the values at the nearest or both ends of the domino
if the adjacent domino values match a value on the domino being moved allow it to be placed, otherwise don't allow it to be placed
In the above example, "placing" a domino would simply mean moving it to a point on the play surface grid in either a vertical or horizontal orientation.
This is a very broad overview and there are plenty of gotchas that I haven't covered which may or may not give you trouble.
Edit: You could also do this without using a grid but it would be a little trickier when it comes to finding and inspecting adjacent dominoes.
I am trying to draw a box that can help someone understand the dimensions of an item, but I keep having the issue that since I first need to recognize a plane when I put my physical item on top of the plane, my box gets drawn in front of the item.
Is it possible to somehow overcome this?
#John Scalo is right, your problem is not having to first detect a plane, but it's that your render engine doesn't know that part of your green box frame is occluded (hidden) by a real-world object.
"…to somehow overcome this"
Yes, and by doing so you might be "solving" your original problem—help someone understand the dimensions of an item.
(Depending on your choice of render engine, e.g. SceneKit) You can add an invisible 3D object that has the same dimensions as the real-world object; so the render engine will "know" that some parts of your box frame are behind this (for the user invisible) 3D object. Therefor, you can tell it not to draw those parts of your box frame, which will give the illusion (borrowing from Apple here) that your soda can has the box around it.
These workarounds are inaccurate, but maybe their accuracy is enough for the level of realism you are trying to achieve:
Option 1: 1. After detecting the desk surface, place a semi-transparent 3D object over the soda can and then resize it (gestures/buttons your choice) until it's about the dimensions of the soda can. 2. Confirm that you're done, and just don't draw a texture on it at all just let it occlude the green box frame.
Option 2: Hold your device near the edges of the soda can and add "enough" ARAnchors to be able to create a "bounding shape" that (again) can be used to capture the real-word object and occlude that.
Option 3: (intense, and perhaps the least accurate) Use your finger to "brush" over the object from various angles, and on each touch perform a hit test (hopefully the top/nearest hit is a part of your soda can) and build up a "bounding shape" that way.
Option X: any combination of 1 - 2 - 3.
Good luck, there's lots of people trying to work around this device/ARKit limitation at them moment, so keep your eyes open for good ideas.
The problem you're dealing with is called occlusion, and ARKit doesn't (currently?) include occlusion support. Maybe some day soon iPhones and iPads will begin to ship with LIDAR (or similar), in which case ARKit will be able to detect objects in the scene, making occlusion much easier.
For an Android App I have created a custom overlay here, to display various items of game data on the map.
In general the overlay works fine and smoothly!
However there is one geometrical constellation which is not working as expected: Some objects within the overlay are not bound to geocoordinates, but to current user location. Now it happens, that Osmdroid is selectively redrawing the screen. When the screen is not focussed to user location, the user location bound stuff is not updated correctly: New stuff gets only drawn in some selective rectangle, old stuff isn't deleted outside that rectangle.
So far I failed to find a mechanism to communicate the required redraw of an overlay to the basic Osmdroid system? I.e. to invalidate the surroundings of the current user location? Any hint, clue or pointer?
By studying the sample code I realized they really consider it the overlay responsibility to issue appropriate invalidate calls to the map component to ensure their own optical integrity.
I am still struggling with the coordinates to do the right invalidate(left, top, right, buttom) calls cause my updates actually happen on location changes and it is unclear to me if the screen pixel of the map to be invalidated need to get measured relative to the old location or the new one. This is actually a timing question.
However taking the CPU byte and issuing postInvalidate() just looks as intended and it is unclear how much performance is really lost.
I want to make series of images along with the path that between the points touch begins and ends.
So, I tried CCRibbon, it makes series of images along with touches, but I can't reduce the gap between images.
Actually I want to make no gaps or overlapping images.
Then, I tried another example using CCRenderTaxture, it makes beautifully what I want,
BUT it makes gap too when touch moves fast.
So, for me, it becomes very very hard problem.
Is there Anybody has advice for it or an example.
I really appreciate.
I've been programming the iphone for a couple of months now and have 3 apps in the store already.
However, I have not done any kind of graphics programming in the platform.
Given that I'm planning on starting my 5th app (the 4th is under Apple's review) I wanted to ask for some pointers as to where to get information for this (been googling for a while but nothing matches what I'm looking for)
I need to create an App where I can 'drop' some shapes from a menu (a rectangle, circle, squares, and then some complex shapes) onto a main window.
the idea is that the user can drag them around. BUT, I want them to 'snap' to each other (kind of like in a CAD package where a circle has quadrants on the edges that snap to any other geometry entity in the drawing).
So if I had a circle on the left of the screen and a rectangle on the right and then I move the circle around, it would stop moving to the right If I hit the rectangles edges. Not completely stop but giving some sort of 'resistance' to the continuity of the movement.
Also, if I have several overlapping drawings, is there a way to 'divide' them (any overlapping becomes a shape on itself but is removed from any other shape composing the overlap)?
The reason for this is that I need to calculate the area of the drawing (along with other properties)
I'm thinking of CALayer 1, 2, 3,..., n on of top of the other, each one with a drawing (with CGPath?), that may or may not overlap the others.
Then I need to somehow obtain information of the 'projection' of all those on a single CALayer.
I'm clueless here.
Should I look into Quartz2D? is CALayer and CGPath enough for this?
this is not for a game. Just an engineering application I have in mind.
Any help is appreciated.
regards
dh
iPhone Application Programming Guide has a chapter on drawing.
You might get some ideas where to start by looking at the appropriate lectures from iPhone Application Programming lectures at Stanford. They include hight quality video lectures (filmed by Apple) over at iTunesU, slides and example source code.