Canvas

Some older graphics cards do not support canvases, and will throw an error if you attempt to use them. You should try to avoid using canvases unless you can not achieve the desired effect without them, to avoid excluding users.

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.

Canvases can be susceptible to power of 2 syndrome. Most graphics cards that support Canvas should have non-PO2 texture support. However, there are some old cards that do not. Check with love.graphics.isSupported("npot") if it is supported.

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:generateMipmaps	Generates mipmaps for the Canvas, based on the contents of the highest-resolution mipmap level.	11.0
Canvas:getFSAA	Gets the number of FSAA samples used when drawing to the Canvas.	0.9.1	0.10.0
Canvas:getFormat	Gets the texture format of the Canvas.	0.9.1	11.0
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:getMipmapMode	Gets the MipmapMode this Canvas was created with.	11.0
Canvas:getPixel	Gets the pixel at the specified position in a Canvas.	0.9.0	0.10.0
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
Object:release	Immediately destroys the object's Lua reference.	11.0
Object:type	Gets the type of the object as a string.
Object:typeOf	Checks whether an object is of a certain type.

Supertypes

• Drawable
• Object

Examples

Drawing something to the Canvas and then the Canvas itself.

function love.load()
	canvas = love.graphics.newCanvas(800, 600)

	-- Rectangle is drawn to the canvas with the alpha blend mode.
	love.graphics.setCanvas(canvas)
		canvas: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 blend mode when drawing the Canvas itself to prevent another blending.
	love.graphics.setBlendMode('premultiplied')
	love.graphics.draw(canvas)
	-- Observe the difference if the Canvas is drawn with the alpha blend mode instead.
	love.graphics.setBlendMode('alpha')
	love.graphics.draw(canvas, 100, 0)

	-- Rectangle is drawn directly to the screen with the alpha blend mode.
	love.graphics.setBlendMode('alpha')
	love.graphics.setColor(255, 0, 0, 128)
	love.graphics.rectangle('fill', 200, 0, 100, 100)
end

See Also

• love.graphics
• love.graphics.setCanvas

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