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Tutorial 07: Alpha blending

According to OpenVG specifications, the pipeline mechanism by which primitives are rendered consists in the following steps:

Previous tutorials have introduced all the pipeline stages except the last one: now it’s time to take a look at blending.


Blending equations

A blending mode defines an alpha blending function α(Asrc, Adst) and a color blending function c(RGBsrc, RGBdst, Asrc, Adst). Given a non-premultiplied source color and alpha tuple (Rsrc, Gsrc, Bsrc, Asrc) and a non-premultiplied destination color and alpha tuple (Rdst, Gdst, Bdst, Adst), blending replaces the destination with the blended tuple (c(Rsrc, Rdst, Asrc, Adst), c(Gsrc, Gdst, Asrc, Adst), c(Bsrc, Bdst, Asrc, Adst), α(Asrc, Adst)).

If either the source or destination is stored in a premultiplied format (i.e., pixels are stored as tuples of the form (A * R, A * G, A * B, A)), the alpha value is conceptually divided out prior to applying the blending equations described above. If the destination is premultiplied, the destination color values are clamped to the range [0, A] when read, and the destination alpha value is multiplied into each color channel prior to storage. If the destination format does not store alpha values, an alpha value of 1 is used in place of Adst.


Porter-Duff blending

Given two premultiplied colors and their relative alpha values, Porter-Duff blending defines the resulting (premultiplied) color and alpha value by the following general equation:

Dca' = f(Sc, Dc) * Sa * Da + Y * Sca * (1 - Da) + Z * Dca * (1 - Sa)

Da' = X * Sa * Da + Y * Sa * (1 - Da) + Z * Da * (1 - Sa)

where:

Depending on the compositing operation, each of the above values may or may not be used in the generation of the destination pixel value.


Blending in OpenVG

The VGBlendMode enumeration defines the possible blending modes: VG_BLEND_SRC, VG_BLEND_SRC_OVER, VG_BLEND_DST_OVER, VG_BLEND_SRC_IN, VG_BLEND_DST_IN, VG_BLEND_MULTIPLY, VG_BLEND_SCREEN, VG_BLEND_DARKEN, VG_BLEND_LIGHTEN, VG_BLEND_ADDITIVE. We can use vgSeti function, with a parameter type of VG_BLEND_MODE, to set the blend mode.

vgSeti(VG_BLEND_MODE, VG_BLEND_SRC_OVER);

The following table shows the equation factors for each OpenVG blend mode:

Blend modef(Sc, Dc)XYZ
VG_BLEND_SRCSc110
VG_BLEND_SRC_OVERSc111
VG_BLEND_DST_OVERDc111
VG_BLEND_SRC_INSc100
VG_BLEND_DST_INDc100
VG_BLEND_MULTIPLYScDc111
VG_BLEND_SCREENSc + Dc(1 - Sc)111
VG_BLEND_DARKENmin(Sc, Dc)111
VG_BLEND_LIGHTENmax(Sc, Dc)111
VG_BLEND_ADDITIVESc + Dc111

The following table shows the resulting (and simplified) blend equation for each OpenVG blend mode:

Blend modeDca’Da’
VG_BLEND_SRCScaSa
VG_BLEND_SRC_OVERSca + Dca(1 - Sa)Sa + Da(1 - Sa)
VG_BLEND_DST_OVERDca + Sca(1 - Da)Da + Sa(1 - Da)
VG_BLEND_SRC_INScaDaSaDa
VG_BLEND_DST_INDcaSaSaDa
VG_BLEND_MULTIPLYScaDca + Sca(1 - Da) + Dca(1 - Sa)Sa + Da(1 - Sa)
VG_BLEND_SCREENSca + Dca(1 - Sca)Sa + Da(1 - Sa)
VG_BLEND_DARKENmin(ScaDa, DcaSa) + Sca(1 - Da) + Dca(1 - Sa)Sa + Da(1 - Sa)
VG_BLEND_LIGHTENmax(ScaDa, DcaSa) + Sca(1 - Da) + Dca(1 - Sa)Sa + Da(1 - Sa)
VG_BLEND_ADDITIVESca + DcaSa + Da

The tutorial code

The tutorial code is really simple. Two images are drawn on top of each other: first a destination image is drawn using the VG_BLEND_SRC blend mode, then a source image is drawn on top of the previous one using a variable blend mode. The user can change the blend mode and, at the same time, can move both images and see the visual result of blending equations.

// SRC and DST images
VGImage srcImage;
VGImage dstImage;
// the current blend mode
VGBlendMode blendMode;

// draw DST image
vgSeti(VG_BLEND_MODE, VG_BLEND_SRC);
vgSeti(VG_MATRIX_MODE, VG_MATRIX_IMAGE_USER_TO_SURFACE);
vgLoadIdentity();
vgTranslate(dstImagePos[X], dstImagePos[Y]);
vgDrawImage(dstImage);
// draw SRC image, setting the current blend mode
vgSeti(VG_BLEND_MODE, blendMode);
vgLoadIdentity();
vgTranslate(srcImagePos[X], srcImagePos[Y]);
vgDrawImage(srcImage);
 
Source image “over” destination image (VG_BLEND_SRC_OVER)

Both images are generated procedurally according to the current surface size. A flower-like path is drawn (at the lower-left corner) with a linear gradient fill, then pixels are copied from the drawing surface to the VGImage object, using the vgGetPixelsfunction.

// create images
srcImage = vgCreateImage(imgFormat, imgSize, imgSize, VG_IMAGE_QUALITY_NONANTIALIASED);
dstImage = vgCreateImage(imgFormat, imgSize, imgSize, VG_IMAGE_QUALITY_NONANTIALIASED);

// clear surface with a transparent black
vgSetfv(VG_CLEAR_COLOR, 4, black);
vgSeti(VG_BLEND_MODE, VG_BLEND_SRC);

// generate SRC image
vgClear(0, 0, surfaceWidth, surfaceHeight);
vgSetPaint(paintSrc, VG_FILL_PATH);
vgDrawPath(flower, VG_FILL_PATH);
vgGetPixels(srcImage, 0, 0, 0, 0, imgSize, imgSize);

// generate DST image
vgClear(0, 0, surfaceWidth, surfaceHeight);
vgSetPaint(paintDst, VG_FILL_PATH);
vgDrawPath(flower, VG_FILL_PATH);
vgGetPixels(dstImage, 0, 0, 0, 0, imgSize, imgSize);
  
Source imageDestination image

A note about the image format value (VGImageFormat enum type) used to create images: in order to speedup “read pixels” and rendering operations, the best practice is to create images using the same (internal) format of the drawing surface; such format could be retrieved through the AmanithVG function vgPrivGetSurfaceFormatMZT (see EGL like interface).


Blending extensions

AmanithVG implements an extension to the OpenVG API relative to blending: VG_MZT_advanced_blend_modes (see extensions chapter for additional details). This extension completes the OpenVG blend modes in order to support a full Porter-Duff alpha-compositing model. In the detail the extension introduces several new blend modes: VG_BLEND_CLEAR_MZT, VG_BLEND_DST_MZT, VG_BLEND_SRC_OUT_MZT, VG_BLEND_DST_OUT_MZT, VG_BLEND_SRC_ATOP_MZT, VG_BLEND_DST_ATOP_MZT, VG_BLEND_XOR_MZT, VG_BLEND_OVERLAY_MZT, VG_BLEND_COLOR_DODGE_MZT, VG_BLEND_COLOR_BURN_MZT, VG_BLEND_HARD_LIGHT_MZT, VG_BLEND_SOFT_LIGHT_MZT, VG_BLEND_DIFFERENCE_MZT, VG_BLEND_EXCLUSION_MZT.

 
Destination image “at top” of source image (VG_BLEND_DST_ATOP_MZT)

The tutorial application will check (at runtime) the support of VG_MZT_advanced_blend_modes extension and, if found, will enable the user to switch to advanced blend modes too.