Question

I’m trying to create a ‘glow’ effect using the Android Path class. However, the gradient is not being warped to fit around the path. Instead, it is simply being display ‘above’ it and clipped to the path’s stroke. Using a square path, the image below shows what I mean:

Instead, that should look more like this:

In other words, the gradient follows the path, and in particular wraps around the corners according to the radius set in the CornerPathEffect.

Here is the relevant part of the code:

paint = new Paint();
paint.setStyle(Style.STROKE);
paint.setStrokeWidth(20);
paint.setAntiAlias(true);
LinearGradient gradient = new LinearGradient(30, 0, 50, 0,
    new int[] {0x00000000, 0xFF0000FF, 0x00000000}, null, Shader.TileMode.MIRROR);
paint.setShader(gradient);
PathEffect cornerEffect = new CornerPathEffect(10);
paint.setPathEffect(cornerEffect);
canvas.drawPath(boxPath, paint);

Any ideas?

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Another alternative is to get a ‘soft-edged brush’ effect when defining the stroke width. I’ve experimented with BlurMaskFilters, but those give a uniform blur rather than a transition from opaque to transparent. Does anyone know if that’s possible?

Answer 1

Turns out there was a stupidly obvious way of doing this. Simply re-use the same path, and adjust the stroke width and alpha on each drawing pass. Example code:

float numberOfPasses = 20;
float maxWidth = 15;
for (float i = 0; i <= numberOfPasses; i++){
    int alpha = (int) (i / numberOfPasses * 255f);
    float width = maxWidth * (1 - i / numberOfPasses);

    paint.setARGB(alpha, 0, 0, 255);
    paint.setStrokeWidth(width);
    canvas.drawPath(path, paint);
}

See below for an example of the result. The left path was drawn using this method, the right path, for comparison, is drawn in a single stroke with maxWidth and 255 alpha.

This mainly works. There are two problems:

• The gradient isn’t as smooth as it could be. This is because each pass being drawn over the previous one results in the alpha building up too quickly, reaching 255 before the final strokes. Experimenting a bit with the line int alpha = (int) (i / numberOfPasses * 125f); (note the change to 125f rather than 255f) helps.

• The path looks like it has been ‘cut’ on the insides of the corners. Probably some result of the CornerPathEffect applied.