Rainmeter Forums

2. Would like a basic blur for shape meters. I'm not talking about blurring the background behind the shapes like Acrylic or Aero, but the shape itself. A blurry rectangle or oval etc.
   
3. I would like to have basic shadows for shape meters and bar meters. Implementing the blur feature above should enable you to do this. As we already have a good shadow setting for string meters. This shouldn't be too hard (especially for bars and rectangles.)

Bekarfel wrote: ↑November 2nd, 2020, 12:04 pm There is a plugin that will do this
https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?f=127&t=23106

Yincognito wrote: ↑November 2nd, 2020, 5:11 pm Yep, this is a bit problematic to do with the current Rainmeter capabilities. So far, there are more or less 2 solutions for it, but they are not perfect and require a certain scenario in order to work:

- for "regular" shapes (i.e. a circle, a rectangle), something similar to a blur can be achieved by applying a linear or radial gradient from full opacity to full transparency on either the fill color of the shape or its stroke color
- for "irregular shapes", a similar effect can be achieved by replicating the meter into multiple similarly shaped but larger meters that are filled with a gradually "fading" (in terms of transparency) color

As for the daylight map (nice one, by the way), a somewhat similar effect to bluring its "edges" can potentially be achieved / approximated by drawing something like this (I took the interactive cubic bezier shape example here as a base, but obviously it can be adjusted to other scenarios, including sin() and cos() ones)...

Code:

Code: Select all

[Variables]
; BC = Base Color; SW = Stroke Width; AC = Alpha Change
BC=255,0,0
SW=2
AC=(255/5)

[Rainmeter]
Update=1000
DynamicWindowSize=1
AccurateText=1
BackgroundMode=2
SolidColor=47,47,47,255

---Meters---

[Curve]
Meter=Shape
Shape=Curve 100,250,400,250,100,100,400,100,0 | StrokeWidth #SW# | Stroke Color #BC#,255
Shape2=Curve (100-#SW#*1),250,(400+#SW#*1),250,(100-#SW#*1),(100-#SW#*1),(400+#SW#*1),(100-#SW#*1),0 | StrokeWidth #SW# | Stroke Color #BC#,(255-#AC#*1)
Shape3=Curve (100-#SW#*2),250,(400+#SW#*2),250,(100-#SW#*2),(100-#SW#*2),(400+#SW#*2),(100-#SW#*2),0 | StrokeWidth #SW# | Stroke Color #BC#,(255-#AC#*2)
Shape4=Curve (100-#SW#*3),250,(400+#SW#*3),250,(100-#SW#*3),(100-#SW#*3),(400+#SW#*3),(100-#SW#*3),0 | StrokeWidth #SW# | Stroke Color #BC#,(255-#AC#*3)
Shape5=Curve (100-#SW#*4),250,(400+#SW#*4),250,(100-#SW#*4),(100-#SW#*4),(400+#SW#*4),(100-#SW#*4),0 | StrokeWidth #SW# | Stroke Color #BC#,(255-#AC#*4)
Shape6=Curve (100-#SW#*5),250,(400+#SW#*5),250,(100-#SW#*5),(100-#SW#*5),(400+#SW#*5),(100-#SW#*5),0 | StrokeWidth #SW# | Stroke Color #BC#,(255-#AC#*5)

Preview:
Blur Simulation - Curve.jpg
So yeah, as I said, while the shape replication is not a problem in itself, it's a bit problematic to get the shape "segments" right, depending on how irregular the shape is. Thus, in some cases, using an image instead becomes simpler, depending on context.

mpurses wrote: ↑November 4th, 2020, 2:36 pm Thank you for that example, I'll play around with that way and see where I get. My equation for the curves (https://www.desmos.com/calculator/whscclvtn2) aren't the easiest to play with so that's why I gave up early on and went with images.