The {@code LinearGradientPaint} class provides a way to filla {@link java.awt.Shape} with a linear color gradient pattern. The usermay specify two or more gradient colors, and this paint will provide an interpolation between each color. The user also specifies start and end points which define where in user space the color gradient should begin and end.
The user must provide an array of floats specifying how to distribute the colors along the gradient. These values should range from 0.0 to 1.0 and act like keyframes along the gradient (they mark where the gradient should be exactly a particular color).
In the event that the user does not set the first keyframe value equal to 0 and/or the last keyframe value equal to 1, keyframes will be created at these positions and the first and last colors will be replicated there. So, if a user specifies the following arrays to construct a gradient:
{Color.BLUE, Color.RED}, {.3f, .7f}
this will be converted to a gradient with the following keyframes:
{Color.BLUE, Color.BLUE, Color.RED, Color.RED}, {0f, .3f, .7f, 1f}
The user may also select what action the {@code LinearGradientPaint}should take when filling color outside the start and end points. If no cycle method is specified, {@code NO_CYCLE} will be chosen bydefault, which means the endpoint colors will be used to fill the remaining area.
The colorSpace parameter allows the user to specify in which colorspace the interpolation should be performed, default sRGB or linearized RGB.
The following code demonstrates typical usage of {@code LinearGradientPaint}:
Point2D start = new Point2D.Float(0, 0); Point2D end = new Point2D.Float(50, 50); float[] dist = {0.0f, 0.2f, 1.0f}; Color[] colors = {Color.RED, Color.WHITE, Color.BLUE}; LinearGradientPaint p = new LinearGradientPaint(start, end, dist, colors);
This code will create a {@code LinearGradientPaint} which interpolatesbetween red and white for the first 20% of the gradient and between white and blue for the remaining 80%.
This image demonstrates the example code above for each of the three cycle methods:
@see java.awt.Paint
@see java.awt.Graphics2D#setPaint
@author Nicholas Talian, Vincent Hardy, Jim Graham, Jerry Evans
@since 1.6