Java: how to do double-buffering in Swing?

Question

EDIT TWO

To prevent snarky comments and one-line answers missing the point: IFF it is as simple as calling setDoubleBuffered(true), then how do I get access to the current offline buffer so that I can start messing with the BufferedImage's underlying pixel databuffer?

I took the time to write a running piece of code (which looks kinda fun too) so I'd really appreciate answers actually answering (what a shock ;) my question and explaining what/how this is working instead of one-liners and snarky comments ;)

Here's a working piece of code that bounces a square across a JFrame. I'd like to know about the various ways that can be used to transform this piece of code so that it uses double-buffering.

Note that the way I clear the screen and redraw the square ain't the most efficient but this is really not what this question is about (in a way, it's better for the sake of this example that it is somewhat slow).

Basically, I need to constantly modify a lot pixels in a BufferedImage (as to have some kind of animation) and I don't want to see the visual artifacts due to single-buffering on screen.

I've got a JLabel whose Icon is an ImageIcon wrapping a BufferedImage. I want to modify that BufferedImage.

What has to be done so that this becomes double-buffered?

I understand that somehow "image 1" will be shown while I'll be drawing on "image 2". But then once I'm done drawing on "image 2", how do I "quickly" replace "image 1" by "image 2"?

Is this something I should be doing manually, like, say, by swapping the JLabel's ImageIcon myself?

Should I be always drawing in the same BufferedImage then do a fast 'blit' of that BufferedImage's pixels in the JLabel's ImageIcon's BufferedImage? (I guess no and I don't see how I could "synch" this with the monitor's "vertical blank line" [or equivalent in flat-screen: I mean, to 'synch' without interfering with the moment the monitor itselfs refreshes its pixels, as to prevent shearing]).

What about the "repaint" orders? Am I suppose to trigger these myself? Which/when exactly should I call repaint() or something else?

The most important requirement is that I should be modifying pixels directly in the images's pixel databuffer.

import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.event.WindowAdapter;
import java.awt.event.WindowEvent;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.awt.image.DataBufferInt;

public class DemosDoubleBuffering extends JFrame {

    private static final int WIDTH  = 600;
    private static final int HEIGHT = 400;

    int xs = 3;
    int ys = xs;

    int x = 0;
    int y = 0;

    final int r = 80;

    final BufferedImage bi1;

    public static void main( final String[] args ) {
        final DemosDoubleBuffering frame = new DemosDoubleBuffering();
        frame.addWindowListener(new WindowAdapter() {
            public void windowClosing( WindowEvent e) {
                System.exit(0);
            }
        });
        frame.setSize( WIDTH, HEIGHT );
        frame.pack();
        frame.setVisible( true );
    }

    public DemosDoubleBuffering() {
        super( "Trying to do double buffering" );
        final JLabel jl = new JLabel();
        bi1 = new BufferedImage( WIDTH, HEIGHT, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB );
        final Thread t = new Thread( new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                while ( true ) {
                    move();
                    drawSquare( bi1 );
                    jl.repaint();
                    try {Thread.sleep(10);} catch (InterruptedException e) {}
                }
            }
        });
        t.start();
        jl.setIcon( new ImageIcon( bi1 ) );
        getContentPane().add( jl );
    }

    private void drawSquare( final BufferedImage bi ) {
        final int[] buf = ((DataBufferInt) bi.getRaster().getDataBuffer()).getData();
        for (int i = 0; i < buf.length; i++) {
            buf[i] = 0xFFFFFFFF;    // clearing all white
        }
        for (int xx = 0; xx < r; xx++) {
            for (int yy = 0; yy < r; yy++) {
                buf[WIDTH*(yy+y)+xx+x] = 0xFF000000;
            }
        }
    }

    private void move() {
        if ( !(x + xs >= 0 && x + xs + r < bi1.getWidth()) ) {
            xs = -xs;
        }
        if ( !(y + ys >= 0 && y + ys + r < bi1.getHeight()) ) {
            ys = -ys;
        }
        x += xs;
        y += ys;
    }

}

EDIT

This is not for a full-screen Java application, but a regular Java application, running in its own (somewhat small) window.

Answer 1

---- Edited to address per pixel setting ----

The item blow addresses double buffering, but there's also an issue on how to get pixels into a BufferedImage.

If you call

WriteableRaster raster = bi.getRaster()

on the BufferedImage it will return a WriteableRaster. From there you can use

int[] pixels = new int[WIDTH*HEIGHT];
// code to set array elements here
raster.setPixel(0, 0, pixels);

Note that you would probably want to optimize the code to not actually create a new array for each rendering. In addition, you would probably want to optimized the array clearing code to not use a for loop.

Arrays.fill(pixels, 0xFFFFFFFF);

would probably outperform your loop setting the background to white.

---- Edited after response ----

The key is in your original setup of the JFrame and inside the run rendering loop.

First you need to tell SWING to stop Rasterizing whenever it wants to; because, you'll be telling it when you're done drawing to the buffered image you want to swap out in full. Do this with JFrame's

setIgnoreRepaint(true);

Then you'll want to create a buffer strategy. Basically it specifies how many buffers you want to use

createBufferStrategy(2);

Now that you tried to create the buffer strategy, you need to grab the BufferStrategy object as you will need it later to switch buffers.

final BufferStrategy bufferStrategy = getBufferStrategy();

Inside your Thread modify the run() loop to contain:

...
  move();
  drawSqure(bi1);
  Graphics g = bufferStrategy.getDrawGraphics();
  g.drawImage(bi1, 0, 0, null);
  g.dispose();
  bufferStrategy.show();
...

The graphics grabbed from the bufferStrategy will be the off-screen Graphics object, when creating triple buffering, it will be the "next" off-screen Graphics object in a round-robin fashion.

The image and the Graphics context are not related in a containment scenario, and you told Swing you'd do the drawing yourself, so you have to draw the image manually. This is not always a bad thing, as you can specify the buffer flipping when the image is fully drawn (and not before).

Disposing of the graphics object is just a good idea as it helps in garbage collection. Showing the bufferStrategy will flip buffers.

While there might have been a misstep somewhere in the above code, this should get you 90% of the way there. Good luck!

---- Original post follows ----

It might seem silly to refer such a question to a javase tutorial, but have you looked into BufferStrategy and BufferCapatbilites?

The main issue I think you are encountering is that you are fooled by the name of the Image. A BufferedImage has nothing to do with double buffering, it has to do with "buffering the data (typically from disk) in memory." As such, you will need two BufferedImages if you wish to have a "double buffered image"; as it is unwise to alter pixels in image which is being shown (it might cause repainting issues).

In your rendering code, you grab the graphics object. If you set up double buffering according to the tutorial above, this means you will grab (by default) the off-screen Graphics object, and all drawing will be off-screen. Then you draw your image (the right one of course) to the off-screen object. Finally, you tell the strategy to show() the buffer, and it will do the replacement of the Graphics context for you.

Answer 2

Generally we use Canvas class which is suitable for animation in Java. Anyhoo, following is how you achieve double buffering:

class CustomCanvas extends Canvas {
  private Image dbImage;
  private Graphics dbg; 
  int x_pos, y_pos;

  public CustomCanvas () {

  }

  public void update (Graphics g) {
    // initialize buffer
    if (dbImage == null) {

      dbImage = createImage (this.getSize().width, this.getSize().height);
      dbg = dbImage.getGraphics ();

    }

    // clear screen in background
    dbg.setColor (getBackground ());
    dbg.fillRect (0, 0, this.getSize().width, this.getSize().height);

    // draw elements in background
    dbg.setColor (getForeground());
    paint (dbg);

    // draw image on the screen
    g.drawImage (dbImage, 0, 0, this); 
  }

        public void paint (Graphics g)
 {

        g.setColor  (Color.red);



        g.fillOval (x_pos - radius, y_pos - radius, 2 * radius, 2 * radius);

    }
}

Now you can update the x_pos and y_pos from a thread, followed by the 'repaint' call on the canvas object. The same technique should work on a JPanel as well.

Answer 3

Here's a variation in which all drawing takes place on the event dispatch thread.

Addendum:

Basically, I need to constantly modify a lot pixels in a BufferedImage…

This kinetic model illustrates several approaches to pixel animation.

import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.EventQueue;
import java.awt.Graphics2D;
import java.awt.GridLayout;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;

/** @see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4430356 */
public class DemosDoubleBuffering extends JPanel implements ActionListener {

    private static final int W = 600;
    private static final int H = 400;
    private static final int r = 80;
    private int xs = 3;
    private int ys = xs;
    private int x = 0;
    private int y = 0;
    private final BufferedImage bi;
    private final JLabel jl = new JLabel();
    private final Timer t  = new Timer(10, this);

    public static void main(final String[] args) {
        EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                JFrame frame = new JFrame();
                frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
                frame.add(new DemosDoubleBuffering());
                frame.pack();
                frame.setVisible(true);
            }
        });
    }

    public DemosDoubleBuffering() {
        super(true);
        this.setLayout(new GridLayout());
        this.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(W, H));
        bi = new BufferedImage(W, H, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
        jl.setIcon(new ImageIcon(bi));
        this.add(jl);
        t.start();
    }

    @Override
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        move();
        drawSquare(bi);
        jl.repaint();
    }

    private void drawSquare(final BufferedImage bi) {
        Graphics2D g = bi.createGraphics();
        g.setColor(Color.white);
        g.fillRect(0, 0, W, H);
        g.setColor(Color.blue);
        g.fillRect(x, y, r, r);
        g.dispose();
    }

    private void move() {
        if (!(x + xs >= 0 && x + xs + r < bi.getWidth())) {
            xs = -xs;
        }
        if (!(y + ys >= 0 && y + ys + r < bi.getHeight())) {
            ys = -ys;
        }
        x += xs;
        y += ys;
    }
}

Answer 4

What you want is basically impossible in windowed mode with Swing. There is no support for raster synchronization for window repaints, this is only available in fullscreen mode (and even then may not be supported by all platforms).

Swing components are double-buffered by default, that is they will do all the rendering to an intermediate buffer and that buffer is then finally copied to the screen, avoiding flicker from background clearing and then painting on top of it. And thats the only strategy that is reasonable well supported on all underlying platforms. It avoids only repaint flickering, but not visual tearing from moving graphic elements.

A reasonably simple way of having access to the raw pixels of an area fully under you control would be to extend a custom component from JComponent and overwrite its paintComponent()-method to paint the area from a BufferedImage (from memory):

public class PixelBufferComponent extends JComponent {

    private BufferedImage bufferImage;

    public PixelBufferComponent(int width, int height) {
        bufferImage = new BufferedImage(width, height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
        setPreferredSize(new Dimension(width, height));
    }

    public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
        g.drawImage(bufferImage, 0, 0, null);
    }

}

You can then manipulate you buffered image whichever way you desire. To get your changes made visible on screen, simply call repaint() on it. If you do the pixel manipulation from a thread other than the EDT, you need TWO buffered images to cope with race conditions between the actual repaint and your manipulation thread.

Note that this skeleton will not paint the entire area of the component when used with a layout manager that stretches the component beyond its preferred size.

Note also, the buffered image approach mostly only makes sense if you do real low level pixel manipulation via setRGB(...) on the image or if you directly access the underlying DataBuffer directly. If you can do all the manipulations using Graphics2D's methods, you could do all the stuff in the paintComponent method using the provided graphics (which is actually a Graphics2D and can be simply casted).