I stumbled on this question while looking for a solution, and the provided answer solves it quite well. However, it didn't really suit my purposes, for which I needed a "tensorizable" solution (i.e. implemented in numpy without explicit loops), and possibly with a linewidth option. I ended up implementing my own version, and since in the end it's also quite faster than line_aa, I thought I could share it.
It comes in two flavors, with and without linewidth. Actually the former is not a generalization of the latter, and neither perfectly agrees with line_aa, but for my purposes they're just fine and on plots they look okay.
def naive_line(r0, c0, r1, c1):
# The algorithm below works fine if c1 >= c0 and c1-c0 >= abs(r1-r0).
# If either of these cases are violated, do some switches.
if abs(c1-c0) < abs(r1-r0):
# Switch x and y, and switch again when returning.
xx, yy, val = naive_line(c0, r0, c1, r1)
return (yy, xx, val)
# At this point we know that the distance in columns (x) is greater
# than that in rows (y). Possibly one more switch if c0 > c1.
if c0 > c1:
return naive_line(r1, c1, r0, c0)
# We write y as a function of x, because the slope is always <= 1
# (in absolute value)
x = np.arange(c0, c1+1, dtype=float)
y = x * (r1-r0) / (c1-c0) + (c1*r0-c0*r1) / (c1-c0)
valbot = np.floor(y)-y+1
valtop = y-np.floor(y)
return (np.concatenate((np.floor(y), np.floor(y)+1)).astype(int), np.concatenate((x,x)).astype(int),
np.concatenate((valbot, valtop)))
I called this "naive" because it is quite similar to the naive implementation in Wikipedia, but with some anti-aliasing, although admittedly not perfect (e.g. makes very thin diagonals).
The weighted version gives much thicker line more pronounced anti-aliasing.
def trapez(y,y0,w):
return np.clip(np.minimum(y+1+w/2-y0, -y+1+w/2+y0),0,1)
def weighted_line(r0, c0, r1, c1, w, rmin=0, rmax=np.inf):
# The algorithm below works fine if c1 >= c0 and c1-c0 >= abs(r1-r0).
# If either of these cases are violated, do some switches.
if abs(c1-c0) < abs(r1-r0):
# Switch x and y, and switch again when returning.
xx, yy, val = weighted_line(c0, r0, c1, r1, w, rmin=rmin, rmax=rmax)
return (yy, xx, val)
# At this point we know that the distance in columns (x) is greater
# than that in rows (y). Possibly one more switch if c0 > c1.
if c0 > c1:
return weighted_line(r1, c1, r0, c0, w, rmin=rmin, rmax=rmax)
# The following is now always < 1 in abs
slope = (r1-r0) / (c1-c0)
# Adjust weight by the slope
w *= np.sqrt(1+np.abs(slope)) / 2
# We write y as a function of x, because the slope is always <= 1
# (in absolute value)
x = np.arange(c0, c1+1, dtype=float)
y = x * slope + (c1*r0-c0*r1) / (c1-c0)
# Now instead of 2 values for y, we have 2*np.ceil(w/2).
# All values are 1 except the upmost and bottommost.
thickness = np.ceil(w/2)
yy = (np.floor(y).reshape(-1,1) + np.arange(-thickness-1,thickness+2).reshape(1,-1))
xx = np.repeat(x, yy.shape[1])
vals = trapez(yy, y.reshape(-1,1), w).flatten()
yy = yy.flatten()
# Exclude useless parts and those outside of the interval
# to avoid parts outside of the picture
mask = np.logical_and.reduce((yy >= rmin, yy < rmax, vals > 0))
return (yy[mask].astype(int), xx[mask].astype(int), vals[mask])
The weight adjustment is admittedly quite arbitrary, so anybody can adjust that to their tastes. The rmin and rmax are now needed to avoid pixels outside of the picture. A comparison:
As you can see, even with w=1, weighted_line is a bit thicker, but in a kind of homogeneous way; similarly, naive_line is homogeneously slightly thinner.
Final note about benchmarking: on my machine, running %timeit f(1,1,100,240) for the various functions (w=1 for weighted_line) resulted in a time of 90 µs for line_aa, 84 µs for weighted_line (although the time of course increases with the weight) and 18 µs for naive_line. Again for comparison, reimplementing line_aa in pure Python (instead of Cython as in the package) took 350 µs.
