Canvas
Available since LÖVE 0.8.0
It has been renamed from Framebuffer.
A Canvas is used for off-screen rendering. Think of it as an invisible screen that you can draw to, but that will not be visible until you draw it to the actual visible screen. It is also known as "render to texture".
By drawing things that do not change position often (such as background items) to the Canvas, and then drawing the entire Canvas instead of each item, you can reduce the number of draw operations performed each frame.
In versions prior to 0.10.0, not all graphics cards that LÖVE supported could use Canvases. love.graphics.isSupported("canvas") could be used to check for support at runtime.
When drawing content to a Canvas using regular alpha blending, the alpha values of the content get multiplied with its RGB values.
Therefore the Canvas' pixel colors will have premultiplied alpha once it has been drawn to, so when drawing the Canvas to the screen or to another Canvas you must use premultiplied alpha blending – love.graphics.setBlendMode("alpha", "premultiplied").
Constructors
love.graphics.newCanvas | Creates a new Canvas. | 0.8.0 |
Functions
Canvas:clear | Clears the contents of a Canvas to a specific color. | 0.8.0 | 0.10.0 |
Canvas:getDimensions | Gets the width and height of the Canvas. | 0.9.0 | |
Canvas:getFSAA | Gets the number of FSAA samples used when drawing to the Canvas. | 0.9.1 | 0.10.0 |
Canvas:getFilter | Gets the filter mode of the Canvas. | 0.8.0 | |
Canvas:getFormat | Gets the texture format of the Canvas. | 0.9.1 | |
Canvas:getHeight | Gets the height of the Canvas. | ||
Canvas:getImageData | Generates ImageData from the contents of the Canvas. | 0.8.0 | 0.10.0 |
Canvas:getMSAA | Gets the number of MSAA samples used when drawing to the Canvas. | 0.9.2 | |
Canvas:getPixel | Gets the pixel at the specified position in a Canvas. | 0.9.0 | 0.10.0 |
Canvas:getWidth | Gets the width of the Canvas. | ||
Canvas:getWrap | Gets the wrapping properties of a Canvas. | 0.8.0 | |
Canvas:newImageData | Generates ImageData from the contents of the Canvas. | 0.10.0 | |
Canvas:renderTo | Render to a Canvas using a function. | 0.8.0 | |
Canvas:setFilter | Sets the filter mode of the Canvas. | 0.8.0 | |
Canvas:setWrap | Sets the wrapping properties of a Canvas. | 0.8.0 | |
Object:type | Gets the type of the object as a string. | ||
Object:typeOf | Checks whether an object is of a certain type. |
Supertypes
Examples
Drawing something to the Canvas and then draw the Canvas to the screen.
function love.load() canvas = love.graphics.newCanvas(800, 600) -- Rectangle is drawn to the canvas with the regular alpha blend mode. love.graphics.setCanvas(canvas) love.graphics.clear() love.graphics.setBlendMode("alpha") love.graphics.setColor(255, 0, 0, 128) love.graphics.rectangle('fill', 0, 0, 100, 100) love.graphics.setCanvas() end function love.draw() love.graphics.setColor(255, 255, 255, 255) -- The rectangle from the Canvas was already alpha blended. -- Use the premultiplied alpha blend mode when drawing the Canvas itself to prevent improper blending. love.graphics.setBlendMode("alpha", "premultiplied") love.graphics.draw(canvas) -- Observe the difference if the Canvas is drawn with the regular alpha blend mode instead. love.graphics.setBlendMode("alpha") love.graphics.draw(canvas, 100, 0) -- Rectangle is drawn directly to the screen with the regular alpha blend mode. love.graphics.setBlendMode("alpha") love.graphics.setColor(255, 0, 0, 128) love.graphics.rectangle('fill', 200, 0, 100, 100) end