Circular gradient in android

Question

I'm trying to make a gradient that emits from the middle of the screen in white, and turns to black as it moves toward the edges of the screen.

As I make a "normal" gradient like this, I have been experimenting with different shapes:

<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:shape="rectangle">
    <gradient android:startColor="#E9E9E9" android:endColor="#D4D4D4"
        android:angle="270"/>
</shape>

When using the "oval"-shape I at least got a round shape, but there were no gradient effect. How can I achieve this?'

Answer 1

You can also do it in code if you need more control, for example multiple colors and positioning. Here is my Kotlin snippet to create a drawable radial gradient:

object ShaderUtils {
    private class RadialShaderFactory(private val colors: IntArray, val positionX: Float,
                                      val positionY: Float, val size: Float): ShapeDrawable.ShaderFactory() {

        override fun resize(width: Int, height: Int): Shader {
            return RadialGradient(
                    width * positionX,
                    height * positionY,
                    minOf(width, height) * size,
                    colors,
                    null,
                    Shader.TileMode.CLAMP)
        }
    }

    fun radialGradientBackground(vararg colors: Int, positionX: Float = 0.5f, positionY: Float = 0.5f,
                                 size: Float = 1.0f): PaintDrawable {
        val radialGradientBackground = PaintDrawable()
        radialGradientBackground.shape = RectShape()
        radialGradientBackground.shaderFactory = RadialShaderFactory(colors, positionX, positionY, size)
        return radialGradientBackground
    }
}

Basic usage (but feel free to adjust with additional params):

view.background = ShaderUtils.radialGradientBackground(Color.TRANSPARENT, BLACK)

Answer 2

Here is the complete xml with gradient, stoke & circular shape.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<shape
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:shape="oval" >

    <!-- You can use gradient with below attributes-->
    <gradient
        android:angle="90"
        android:centerColor="#555994"
        android:endColor="#b5b6d2"
        android:startColor="#555994"
        android:type="linear" />

    <!-- You can omit below tag if you don't need stroke -->
   <stroke android:color="#3b91d7" android:width="5dp"/>

    <!-- Set the same value for both width and height to get a circular shape -->
    <size android:width="200dp" android:height="200dp"/>


    <!--if you need only a single color filled shape-->
    <solid android:color="#e42828"/>


</shape>

Answer 3

<gradient
    android:centerColor="#c1c1c1"
    android:endColor="#4f4f4f"
    android:gradientRadius="400"
    android:startColor="#c1c1c1"
    android:type="radial" >
</gradient>

Answer 4

You can get a circular gradient using android:type="radial":

<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:shape="rectangle">
    <gradient android:type="radial" android:gradientRadius="250"
        android:startColor="#E9E9E9" android:endColor="#D4D4D4" />
</shape>

Answer 5

I always find images helpful when learning a new concept, so this is a supplemental answer.

The %p means a percentage of the parent, that is, a percentage of the narrowest dimension of whatever view we set our drawable on. The images above were generated by changing the gradientRadius in this code

my_gradient_drawable

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <gradient
        android:type="radial"
        android:gradientRadius="10%p"
        android:startColor="#f6ee19"
        android:endColor="#115ede" />
</shape>

Which can be set on a view's background attribute like this

<View
    android:layout_width="200dp"
    android:layout_height="100dp"
    android:background="@drawable/my_gradient_drawable"/>

Center

You can change the center of the radius with

android:centerX="0.2"
android:centerY="0.7"

where the decimals are fractions of the width and height for x and y respectively.

Documentation

Here are some notes from the documentation explaining things a little more.

android:gradientRadius

Radius of the gradient, used only with radial gradient. May be an explicit dimension or a fractional value relative to the shape's minimum dimension.

May be a floating point value, such as "1.2".

May be a dimension value, which is a floating point number appended with a unit such as "14.5sp". Available units are: px (pixels), dp (density-independent pixels), sp (scaled pixels based on preferred font size), in (inches), and mm (millimeters).

May be a fractional value, which is a floating point number appended with either % or %p, such as "14.5%". The % suffix always means a percentage of the base size; the optional %p suffix provides a size relative to some parent container.

Answer 6

I guess you should add android:centerColor

<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:shape="rectangle">
<gradient
  android:startColor="#FFFFFF"
  android:centerColor="#000000"
  android:endColor="#FFFFFF"
  android:angle="0" />
</shape>

This example displays a horizontal gradient from white to black to white.