From time to time, jOpenCV examples will be referenced in this tutorial. You can find the donwload link in the first post of the jOpenCV library thread
Syntax: when referencing classes, sometimes we'll use by their native OpenCV syntax, or their jOpenCV counterpart (with OCV prefix), since what is explained is general and applies to both. In those cases where it only applies to one of both worlds, I'll do my best so that the context is clear enough .
Syntax: when referencing classes, sometimes we'll use by their native OpenCV syntax, or their jOpenCV counterpart (with OCV prefix), since what is explained is general and applies to both. In those cases where it only applies to one of both worlds, I'll do my best so that the context is clear enough .
In this first tutorial we'll learn the jOpenCV basic syntax rules compared to Java OpenCV, and deal with the basic Core Objects such as Mats, Scalars, Points, ...
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Part 1: General jOpenCV syntax rules (compared with native OpenCV)
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If you take the official OpenCV Java documentation as reference, you can easily know which will be the jOpenCV syntax for classes/methods with a few rules. Once you get used to it, it is very easy with these simple things in mind.
- "OCV" preffix: Classes in jOpenCV are named exactly the same name as their native OpenCV Java counterparts, but adding an 'OCV' prefix. This is due to several reasons: quickly identify in code which classes belong to jOpenCV, and avoid conflicts with already existing B4x class names (for instance, Rect)
- Initializators: B4j initialize methods have been added for those classes that are insantiable.
- Polymorphism: OpenCV Java bindings expose several inputs for each class method. The way to overcome this has been to add numeric suffixes to each of them
- Setters, getters: they may have been treated a bit different in some classes depending on if the method has polymorphic variants. But they are all there.
OThers
- (Useful if you are translating code/samples from other languages)
- namespaces: if you are translating a C++ example using Core::transpose(..), the jOpenCV syntax should be
- Dim mCore as OCVCore ' Declare it once, in the Class or process globals.
- mCore.transpose(...) ' Use any of its methods
- (*) Earlier OpenCV versions had a mixed C/C++ syntax, so depending on the example code, syntax may be different. Also, at a given version, some methods were passed from ImgProc to Core and other changes.
- namespaces: if you are translating a C++ example using Core::transpose(..), the jOpenCV syntax should be
- Translating from code B4A OpenCV library: if you had a working code made using the B4A OpenCV library, most of it will directly work since it is also based on the OpenCV Java bindings, even though in this case it was for a different OS / Platform ( Android / arm64)
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Part 2. OCVHelper : Helper methods for a more compact syntax
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OCVHelper class is specific to jOpenCV, and has been added to allow a more compact syntax in those cases where input params can be created in-place instead of declaring and initializing them in advance
It contains several static constructors for the most used basic classes (OCMat, OCVPoint, OCVRect, OCVScalar,....)
It only needs to be declared in the module's globals, and can be directly used.
B4X:
Sub Process_Globals
Dim OCV as OCVHelper
End SubExamples
With 'classic syntax'
B4X:
Dim myMat as OCVMat
Dim myScalar3 as OCVScalar
myScalar3.initialize3( 100, 150, 200)
myMat.initialize3( 2, 3, mType.CV_8UC3, myScalar3)With Helper methods
B4X:
Dim myMat as OCVMat = OCV.Mat.Create4(2, 4, mType.CV_8uC3, OCV.Scalar.Create3(100, 150, 200) )With classic syntax
With Helper methods:
B4X:
Dim myPoint1, myPoint2 as OCVPoint
myPoint1.initialize( 1, 2 )
myPoint2.initialize( 3, 4 )
Dim myPoint3 as OCVPoint = mCore.addPoints( myPoint1, myPoint2)
B4X:
Dim myPoint3 as OCVPoint = mCore.addPoints( OCV.Point.Create( 1, 2 ), OCV.Point.Create( 3, 4 ) )________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Part 3. OpenCV basic objects
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The most common (j)OpenCV objects, which are commonly used by most of the other classes, are included in the Core module.
OCVMat
Think of OCVMat (Mat) as a bidimensional array of any type of object, where you can place nearly everything, and directly perform all kind of manipulations and give it to other class methods so that they can work on it.
Understanding and feeling comfortable with OCVMats is the key to understand how OpenCV works.
The most basic usage of an OCVMat is to contain a frame (picture) pixels, in one plane (gray), 3 (RGB or others), or 4 (RGBA, for instance), but it can be in any color space. And, the most important, it doesn't need to contain an image. Sometimes they can be points, or just statistics.
An OCVMat is basically defined by: the number of rows, cols and type (number of planes, and if each one is a byte, an int, a float, ...)
We can declare a Mat 4-row, 5-col Mat with 3-planes of unsigned chars
B4X:
Dim myMat as OCVMat
myMat.initialize(4, 5, mType.CV_8UC3)
Log ( myMat.toString ) ' <-- get dimensions (rows, cols) and type of a given OCVMat
Log (myMat.dump) ' <-- get all the contents of a OCVMat
Dim mScalar as OCVScalar
mScalar.initialize3( 50, 100, 150)
myMat.setTo( mScalar )
Dim myMat as OCVMat = OCV.CreateMat2(4, 5, mType.CV_8UC3, OCV.CreateScalar3(50, 100, 150) )Most of the operations that can be performed with OCVMats belong to the same OCVMat class, OCVImgProc, or OCVCore
B4X:
' Will perform a conversion from RGB to GRAY, and put the result in the same Mat.
' The method will itself change its type and content
mImgProc.cvtColor1( myMat, myMat, mImgProc.COLOR_RGB2GRAY )
' Let's check now its Type. We'll see that now we only have 1 channel.
Log( myMat.toString )
' Dump Mat content. Useful for small mats.
Log( myMat.dump )
End SubIt has several derived classes with some specific methods, such as OCVMathOfByte, OCVMatOfFLoat, OCVMatOfPoint, .....
OCVScalar
OCVScalar is simply a 1-D to 4-D vector. It is just a container that is used quite often in OpencV.
For instance, if a class method expects a 3-component color as one of its input parameters, we simply define a OCVScalar to encapsulate this.
B4X:
Dim myScalar as OCVScalar
myScalar.initialize3(30,40,50)
'...or, alternatively
Dim myScalar as OCVScalar = OCV.Scalar.create3(30,40,50)OCVRect
Object defining a rectangle. Also frequently used to define ROIs (Regions of Interest) in a, OCVMat object
B4X:
Dim myRect as OCVRect = OCV.Rect.create(10, 10, 20, 30)OCVSize
2-dimensional vector that holds a pair of int values defining a [width, height] size
OCVPoint
2-dimensional vector that holds a pair of float values defining a [x, y] 2D-point