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Thread: Howto draw stuff

  1. #1
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    Default Howto draw stuff

    How should one draw stuff?
    There are a few different things that can be done,
    1)Draw lines, polygons, circles etc.
    2)Draw letters
    3)Draw something (lines, pixels, etc.) and then redraw it at a sligthliy different position (i.e. animation).
    4)Load an image from a file and draw it, and possible also move it around as some kind of animation.

    I read about the Arthur painting system and look at the tutorials but I can't make a connection between these two. How should these things REALLY be done?
    Any ideas?

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    What exactly do you want to do?
    Here are some painting examples

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    Quote Originally Posted by wysota
    What exactly do you want to do?
    Here are some painting examples
    I have a lot of ideas, a simple game where you fly around in a space craft? A plotting tool (i.e. a lot of datapoints), etc.
    I'm just interested in good strategies for drawingstuff.

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    Take a look at QPainter class and its superclass.

    And remember to paint only in paintEvents. The examples mentioned above will give you a good start.

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    If I make a program where I can plot things, and then wish to select the things in the graph, by clicking them, how do I do this? I'm totaly clueless on these things.

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    Store a list of your objects and in the mousePressEvent of your widget check if you hit one of the items based on the coords of the click and stored items.

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    Quote Originally Posted by Morea
    I have a lot of ideas, a simple game where you fly around in a space craft? A plotting tool (i.e. a lot of datapoints), etc.
    I'm just interested in good strategies for drawingstuff.
    3D and 2D plotting are very different.
    For a 3D space flight I would use open GL or other external libs that do 3D rendering.
    For 2D plotting Qt comes very well equiped, you should read the docs on painting and QPainter.

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    QCanvas, that was Qt3, right?

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    Quote Originally Posted by Morea
    QCanvas, that was Qt3, right?
    Yes. It is not needed in Qt4 anymore. All the magic features it had are now present in QWidget.

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    If I create a class for drawing
    Qt Code:
    1. class Render:public QWidget
    2. {
    3. Q_OBJECT
    4. public:
    5. Render(QWidget* parent=0);
    6. };
    To copy to clipboard, switch view to plain text mode 

    how can I set the size and position of the area where I should be doing the drawings if I'm not using the layout classes? Or should I really start using the layout tools?
    Last edited by Morea; 17th March 2006 at 23:30.

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    Quote Originally Posted by Morea
    how can I set the size and position of the area where I should be doing the drawings if I'm not using the layout classes?
    QWidget::setGeometry()
    Or should I really start using the layout tools?
    Yes, you should. Don't forget to reimplement QWidget::sizeHint().

  12. #12
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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    I'm having some problem understanding how stuff is drawn on a widget with the QPainter.
    If I do

    Qt Code:
    1. void Render::paintEvent(QPaintEvent* event)
    2. {
    3. int i;
    4. QPainter painter(this);
    5. for (i=0;i<10;i++)
    6. {
    7.  
    8. painter.drawLine(QLine(rand()%250,rand()%100,rand()%250,rand()%100));
    9. }
    10. }
    To copy to clipboard, switch view to plain text mode 

    Where Render is a only derived from QWidget and it is put in a Layout to stretch it out and make it big. The code works fine.
    I make new lines by clicking a button that calls a slot in Render class that then runs
    Qt Code:
    1. update();
    To copy to clipboard, switch view to plain text mode 
    to generate a QPaintEvent

    I get 10 new lines every time, is it possible to keep the old lines and just draw new lines on the old ones?

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    Quote Originally Posted by Morea
    I get 10 new lines every time, is it possible to keep the old lines and just draw new lines on the old ones?
    set Qt::WA_NoSystemBackground flag of QWidget.
    Last edited by munna; 18th March 2006 at 13:16.

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    But that gives me an ugly black backgroud, can I get a white background?

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    When the flag Qt::WA_NoSystemBackground is set the background is not automatically repainted and that is why you get black background. Therefore once you set this flag you have to take care paiting even the background. Also, double buffering is disabled once you set this flag.

    On the other hand, if you dont want to use this flag, you can draw your older lines and the new lines every time the paintEvent is called. I think this will be pretty fast and you will not find any kind of flicker or redrawing that is actually taking place.

  16. #16
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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    But what if that means drawing tens of thounds random points? I will really have to store them all then? I'll try that then.

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    Default Re: Howto draw stuff

    You can either

    paint background only once and also keep track of newly shown regions and paint their background also only once. Here you do not have to store your points and just keep drawing the new points.

    or

    Store all your points or line ...and then for every paintEvent redraw them. Here you do not have to keep track of the newly show regions which need to be painted white for the first time.

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