Overriding JButton paintComponent with transparency not showing back panel color

Question

Here is what I am trying to do. I have extended JButton and overwritten the paintComponent method creating my desired effect of a rounded edge button, and a color fading effect when the button is rolled over by a mouse. All that works great. My problem is that the JButton is still painting a white rectangle area as the images show.

I would like 1) the white corners to be gone and 2) the cetner of the button to show the panel behind it. Here is what I have tried:

1- when painting the button use getParent().getBackground() and paint the button first. This works great for opaque panels. However I would love this button to work on a partially or fully transparent panel. With transparent panels it paints the color, but on the white background hiding anything behind the panel (like an image).

2- I have tried many combinations of setOpaque(false) or setContentAreaFilled(false). I have tried this while calling super.paintComponent(g) and not calling it. None of those seem to work.

3- The button looks right when I don't use the method g2.clearRect(0,0,width,height) (clearing the graphics area before painting), but since the graphics object is never covered up the fade effect stops working after one rollover of the button.

4- I use a JLabel for the text and have tried setting it opaque or just not using it and the issue still remains. so I don't think that is the issue.

Since I only want an affect for the JButton and not other swing components I'm really hoping to avoid making my own ButtonUI.

Thanks and I hope this makes sense. Below is the code for my button.

import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.Timer;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;

/**
 * WButton.java
 * 
 * An extension of JButton but with custom graphics
 *
 */

public class WButton extends JButton{

  private Timer timer;
  private float[] background = {.3f,.6f,.8f,0f};
  private boolean fadeUp = true;
  private boolean fadeDown = false;
  private JLabel label;

  /**
   * Default Constructor
   */
  public WButton(){
    super();
    label = new JLabel();
    setupButton();
  }

  /**
   * Text constructor
   */
  public WButton(String text){
    super(text);
    label = new JLabel(text);
    setupButton();
  }

  /**
   * common setup functions
   */
  private void setupButton(){
    timer = new Timer(24,new TimerAction(this));
    label.setLabelFor(this);
    add(label);
  }

  /**
   * Set the background color
   */
  @Override
  public void setBackground(Color bg){
    background = bg.getRGBComponents(background);
    background[3] = 0f;
    super.setBackground(new Color(background[0],background[1],
                                  background[2],background[3]));
    repaint();
  }

  /**
   * get background
   */
  @Override
  public Color getBackground(){
    if(background!=null)
      return new Color(background[0],background[1],background[2],background[3]);

    return new Color(.5f,.5f,.5f);
  }

  /**
   * Set the font of the button
   */
  @Override
  public void setFont(Font font){
    super.setFont(font);
    if(label!=null)
      label.setFont(font);
  }

  /**
   * Override the set text method
   */
  @Override
  public void setText(String t){
    super.setText(t);
    if(label!=null)
      label.setText(t);
  }

  /**
   * Paint the button
   */
  @Override
  public void paintComponent(Graphics g){
    super.paintComponent(g);
    int width = getWidth();
    int height = getHeight();

    Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D)g;
    g2.clearRect(0,0,width,height);
    g2.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING,
                        RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);

    //Check Button Model state
    if(model.isPressed())
      paintPressedButton(g2,width,height);
    else{
      if(model.isRollover()){
        if(fadeUp){
          fadeUp = false;
          timer.start();
        }
      }
      else{
        if(fadeDown){
          fadeDown = false;
          timer.start();
        }
      }
      g2.setPaint(new Color(background[0],background[1],background[2],background[3]));
      g2.fillRoundRect(0,0,width-1,height-1,height,height);
    }
  }

  /**
   * Draw a pressed button
   */
  private void paintPressedButton(Graphics2D g2,int width,int height){

    float[] temp = new float[4];
    for(int i=0;i<background.length;i++)
      temp[i] = background[i]-.4f < 0f ? 0f : background[i]-.4f;

    g2.setPaint(new Color(temp[0],temp[1],temp[2],temp[3]));
    g2.fillRoundRect(0,0,width-1,height-1,height,height);

  }

  /**
   * paint the border
   */
  public void paintBorder(Graphics g){

    int width = getWidth();
    int height = getHeight();
    g.setColor(Color.BLACK);
    g.drawRoundRect(0,0,width-1,height-1,height,height);
  }

  /**
   * Inner action listener class
   */
  private class TimerAction implements ActionListener{

    private float alphaInc = .2f;
    WButton button;

    public TimerAction(WButton b){
      button = b;
    }

    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
      if(model.isRollover()){
        background[3] += alphaInc;
        if(background[3] > 1.0f){
          timer.stop();
          background[3] = 1.0f;
          fadeDown = true;
        }
      }
      else{
        background[3] -= alphaInc;
        if(background[3] < 0f){
          timer.stop();
          background[3] = 0f;
          fadeUp = true;
        }
      }
      button.repaint();
    }
  }
}

EDIT 1

What aly suggested got me closer, but not quite there. Instead of g2.clearRect() I painted the object with a transparent color as suggested. The white box is gone, but a different color is there. Upon investigation is is the color of the parent panel but with no transparency. Here are pictures for an example (the panel has 70% transparency). The first pictures is when the program starts. The second picture is after 1 mouse rollover.

Answer 1

What you could do is instead of using clearRect(), clear the background with a completely transparent color.

g2.setColor(new Color(0,0,0,0));
g2.drawRect(0,0,width,height);

You still need to setOpaque(false) on the JButton so that it doesn't use the blue rollover color as the background once you hover over it once.

Edit: After seeing what you just posted, I think the problem is that the main frame isn't repainted.

Try:

SwingUtilities.getWindowAncestor(this).repaint();    

in the paint method to repaint the frame, that might fix the problem.