Getting the pixels of all layers

[z0r]

Is it possible to get the color of a pixel as a function from all layers in an effect plugin?

Yes I can merge the image and apply an effect. But it's not want I want.

The reason is why I want to know this is also a reason that will probably violate the rules:

I was thinking (not sure if I want to make it yet) on extracting all pixels of the 'final' rendering to send to an other program. For real-time display purposes - a 3D mesh rendered in real-time.

I know will not give Paint.NET any support now and in the future to allow for a real time 3D rendering/painting because it's not the goal.

[Simon Brown]

Is it possible to get the color of a pixel as a function from all layers in an effect plugin?

No.

The reason is why I want to know this is also a reason that will probably violate the rules:

I was thinking (not sure if I want to make it yet) on extracting all pixels of the 'final' rendering to send to an other program. For real-time display purposes - a 3D mesh rendered in real-time.

I'm not sure what you mean, but what I think you mean (doing the rendering in another program) isn't against the rules.

I know will not give Paint.NET any support now and in the future to allow for a real time 3D rendering/painting because it's not the goal.

Sounds like Shape3D.

[z0r]

The intention is not to create a 3D model out of it, but more or less to paint on a 3D model. Apply effects on a texture en preview your changes immediately in 3D space.

[BoltBait]

Is it possible to get the color of a pixel as a function from all layers

Yes.

...in an effect plugin?

No.

You can do this in a filetype plugin but not in an effect plugin.

Rick is considering allowing us effect developers access to the other layers (and more really cool stuff) in a future version of the effect engine. But, it's still in the planning stages at this point, so don't hold your breath waiting for this.

[Genius]

There should be a "virtual, summary" layer that will show the whole image (with all the layers merged) in one "virtual" layer.

I know that this is stupid, but maybe this idea could help You think of other features to PDN. :-)

[pyrochild]

There should be a "virtual, summary" layer that will show the whole image (with all the layers merged)

...that's called the screen.

[z0r]

Yeah well, it was just a crazy idea I had.

[KrisJ]

On a similar note I was wondering what my options are if I want to manipulate layer pixels at close to realtime speeds... Perhaps I should explain:

I am doing imaging of samples from a microscope. Data from my hardware comes in as intensity values which can be either int32 of double (depending on the detector and the C# code responsible for HW interaction). Images are acquired in multiple color channels/detector channels (for instance using an optical camera and an IR camera on the same sample or something similar. Images are typically no bigger than 512 by 512 pixels and one pixel is typically acquired every milisecond, just to give an idea.

Right now I have my own application in C# to do this imaging with a very crude file format for data storage. However, I was thinking that it might be cool to offer the option of saving the image data directly to Pdn or to create a plugin that could channel the data to Pdn somehow, preferably in real time as data comes in. Most of my data needs to be post processed in a paint program anyway to prepare it for reports, publications, ...

Would this be feasible?

I guess it comes down to the question if

public ColorBgra this[int x, int y]

public ColorBgra this[Point pt]

of Surface offer good enough performance and if the rendering process in Pdn is fast enough...

Can anybody shed some light?

[Simon Brown]

I doubt there's a good way to do it real-time (plugins can't do it in the background), but if you just want to send it to PDN, just save a temporary document and open it in a new PDN process the normal way (if you want to separate it into layers look at how Layer Saver reads PDN files).

[barkbark00]

There should be a "virtual, summary" layer that will show the whole image (with all the layers merged)

...that's called the screen.

People in my office were looking at me funny because I just erupted in laughter at your comment. Well played!