Qt: Overlapping semitransparent QgraphicsItem

I've been working with QGraphicsView for a while and I am facing a requisite that I am not sure if it can be fulfilled by using this framework.

Putting it as simple as possible, I have 2 overlapping RectItem with a semitransparent QBrush (the same one for both). Is it possible to prevent the overlapping area from becoming more opaque? I just want the whole area to have the same color (this will occur only if both rects are fully opaque, but sometimes that is not the case)

I know it might seem a weird requisite, but the old graphics engine my colleagues used allowed it.

Any ideas?

Qt provides various blend (composition) modes for the QPainter. Deriving your RectItem class from QGraphicsItem or QGraphicsObject, allows you to customise the painting and using the composition modes, create various effects, as demonstrated in the Qt Example.

If you want two semi-transparent items overlapping without changing the colour (assuming their colour is the same), either the QPainter::CompositionMode_Difference mode, or CompositionMode_Exclusion will do this. Here's example code of such an object: -

Header

#ifndef RECTITEM_H
#define RECTITEM_H

#include <QGraphicsItem>
#include <QColor>

class RectItem : public QGraphicsItem
{
public:
    RectItem(int width, int height, QColor colour);
    ~RectItem();

    QRectF boundingRect() const;

private:
    QRectF m_boundingRect;
    QColor m_colour;

    void paint(QPainter *painter, const QStyleOptionGraphicsItem *option, QWidget *widget = 0);
};

#endif // RECTITEM_H

Implementation

#include "rectitem.h"
#include <QPainter>

RectItem::RectItem(int width, int height, QColor colour)
    : QGraphicsItem(), m_boundingRect(-width/2, -height/2, width, height), m_colour(colour)
{    
    setFlag(QGraphicsItem::ItemIsSelectable);
    setFlag(QGraphicsItem::ItemIsMovable);
}

RectItem::~RectItem()
{
}

QRectF RectItem::boundingRect() const
{
    return m_boundingRect;
}

void RectItem::paint(QPainter *painter, const QStyleOptionGraphicsItem *, QWidget *)
{
    painter->setCompositionMode(QPainter::CompositionMode_Difference);
    painter->setBrush(m_colour);
    painter->drawRect(m_boundingRect);
}

You can now create two RectItem objects of the same semi-transparent colour and add them to the scene

// assuming the scene and view are setup and m_pScene is a pointer to the scene

RectItem* pItem = new RectItem(50, 50, QColor(255, 0, 0, 128));
pItem->setPos(10, 10);
m_pScene->addItem(pItem);

pItem = new RectItem(50, 50, QColor(255, 0, 0, 128));
pItem->setPos(80, 80);
m_pScene->addItem(pItem);