Draw HBITMAP onto layered window. What's wrong?

Question

Hello and good day to everyone,

my final target is to draw a PNG file including alpha onto the screen - that means not into an own window but just somewhere on the desktop. The part to load PNG's into a HBITMAP works now (tested that in a diffrent way) but I don't manage to draw it including alpha.

As far as I've heard the best way to do this would be using alyered windows. So I wroked a lot to redo a couple of examples and tiny tutorials.

The following code compiles without problems and there do not prompt any messages (that means the showError("#") function is never called).

Yet there is nothing visible on the screen :/

Sorry that it is so long... Hope someone would like to look at it at least quickly..

LRESULT CALLBACK WndProc(HWND hWindow, UINT msg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam);


int main(HINSTANCE hInstance)
{


    WNDCLASSEX WndClass;
    char sClassName[]  = "mainClass";
    WndClass.cbSize     = sizeof(WNDCLASSEX);
    WndClass.style      = NULL;
    WndClass.lpfnWndProc   = WndProc;//WndProc;
    WndClass.cbClsExtra = 0;
    WndClass.cbWndExtra = 0;
    WndClass.hInstance  = hInstance;
    WndClass.hIcon      = NULL;
    WndClass.hCursor    = LoadCursor(NULL, IDC_ARROW);
    WndClass.hbrBackground = (HBRUSH)(COLOR_WINDOW+1);
    WndClass.lpszMenuName  = NULL;
    WndClass.lpszClassName = sClassName;
    WndClass.hIconSm    = LoadIcon(NULL, IDI_APPLICATION);
    if (RegisterClassEx(&WndClass) == 0) showError("-1");





    HWND screen = CreateWindowEx(WS_EX_LAYERED,//WS_EX_LEFT
        "mainClass",
        "UpdateLayeredWind",
        WS_DISABLED | WS_VISIBLE,
        200,200,260,260,
        NULL /*eventuelly, GM window*/,
        NULL,
        hInstance,
        NULL);  


    if (screen == NULL) showError("0");




        HBITMAP img = LoadImageResource("D://ThreadDraw/ThreadDraw-test/ThreadDraw/test.png");
            if (img == NULL) showError("1");






    BLENDFUNCTION blend = {0};

    blend.AlphaFormat = AC_SRC_ALPHA;
    blend.SourceConstantAlpha = 155;

    POINT ptPos = {200,300};
    SIZE sizeWnd = {260,260};
    POINT ptPos2 = {200,300};


    ShowWindow(screen, SW_SHOW);



    while (1)
    {


        PAINTSTRUCT             ps;
        HDC                     hdc;
        BITMAP                  bitmap;
        HDC                     hdcMem;
        HGDIOBJ                 oldBitmap;

        hdc = BeginPaint(screen, &ps);

        hdcMem = CreateCompatibleDC(hdc);
        oldBitmap = SelectObject(hdcMem, img);

        GetObject(img, sizeof(bitmap), &bitmap);


        if (SetLayout(hdc,LAYOUT_RTL) == GDI_ERROR)
            showError("5");



            if (!BitBlt(hdc, 0, 0, 64, 64, hdcMem, 0, 0, SRCCOPY))
                showError("4");



            if (!UpdateLayeredWindow(screen,hdcMem,&ptPos,&sizeWnd,hdc,&ptPos2,RGB(255,255,255),&blend,ULW_ALPHA))//ULW_OPAQUE))
            showError("2");



        EndPaint(screen, &ps);

        SelectObject(hdcMem, oldBitmap);
        DeleteDC(hdcMem);


        Sleep(10);

    }



    return 0;
}



LRESULT CALLBACK WndProc(HWND hwnd, UINT Message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam) 
{
    switch(Message) 
    {
        case WM_CLOSE:
            DestroyWindow(hwnd);
            break;
        case WM_DESTROY:
            PostQuitMessage(0);
            break;
        default:
            return DefWindowProc(hwnd, Message, wParam, lParam);
    }
    return 0;
}

By the way, if I use ULW_OPAQUE instead of ULW_ALPHA in UpdateLayeredWindow, then a right sized, black window appears so think the issue has to be something minimal related to the PAINTSTRUKT or BitBlt function.. Yet I tried a lot of ways without any change.

Hope someone can help. Thank you very much in advance!

Answer 1

This is mostly wrong. Your code should:

• Create the layered window with CreateWindowEx.
• Attach the bitmap to it with UpdateLayeredWindow.
• Show the window with ShowWindow. Windows will take care of painting the layered window, so you don't need to handle WM_PAINT or call BeginPaint.
• Enter a message loop.

And that's it.

If you're using Visual Studio, create a new Win32 Project and it will create a new project with a message loop for you.

Update

Here's a sample program that creates a transparent layered window. It needs a function to load a PNG as a transparent bitmap. And it has no error checking.

int APIENTRY _tWinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPTSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow)
{
    LPCTSTR szWindowClass = _T("TransparentClass");

    // Register class
    WNDCLASSEX wcex = {0};

    wcex.cbSize = sizeof(WNDCLASSEX);
    wcex.lpfnWndProc    = DefWindowProc;
    wcex.hInstance      = hInstance;
    wcex.lpszClassName  = szWindowClass;

    RegisterClassEx(&wcex);

    HWND hWnd = CreateWindowEx(WS_EX_LAYERED, szWindowClass, 0, WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW,
        CW_USEDEFAULT, 0, CW_USEDEFAULT, 0, NULL, NULL, hInstance, NULL);

    int width;
    int height;
    HBITMAP hbmp = LoadPng(L"sample.png", &width, &height);

    HDC hdcScreen = GetDC(0);
    HDC hdc = CreateCompatibleDC(hdcScreen);
    ReleaseDC(0, hdcScreen);
    HBITMAP hbmpold = (HBITMAP)SelectObject(hdc, hbmp);

    POINT dcOffset = {0, 0};
    SIZE size = {width, height};
    BLENDFUNCTION bf;
    bf.BlendOp = AC_SRC_OVER;
    bf.BlendFlags = 0;
    bf.SourceConstantAlpha = 255;
    bf.AlphaFormat = AC_SRC_ALPHA;
    UpdateLayeredWindow(hWnd, 0, 0, &size, hdc, &dcOffset, 0, &bf, ULW_ALPHA);
    SelectObject(hdc, hbmpold);
    DeleteDC(hdc);
    DeleteObject(hbmp);

    ShowWindow(hWnd, SW_SHOW);

    MSG msg;

    // Main message loop:
    while (GetMessage(&msg, NULL, 0, 0))
    {
        TranslateMessage(&msg);
        DispatchMessage(&msg);
    }

    return (int)msg.wParam;
}

Another Update

Here's some code to premultiply the red, green and blue values by alpha. It assumes that splash_image points to 32bpp ARGB data of size width*height.

LPBYTE bits = (LPBYTE)splash_image;
int size = width * height;
for (int pixel = 0; pixel != size; ++pixel)
{
    bits[0] = bits[0] * bits[3] / 255;
    bits[1] = bits[1] * bits[3] / 255;
    bits[2] = bits[2] * bits[3] / 255;
    bits += 4;
}