shade border of 2D polygon differently - graphics

Question

we are programming a 2D game in XNA. Now we have polygons which define our level elements. They are triangulated such that we can easily render them. Now I would like to write a shader which renders the polygons as outlined textures. So in the middle of the polygon one would see the texture and on the border it should somehow glow.
My first idea was to walk along the polygon and draw a quad on each line segment with a specific texture. This works but looks strange for small corners where the textures are forced to overlap.
My second approach was to mark all border vertices with some kind of normal pointing out of the polygon. Passing this to the shader would interpolate the normals across edges of the triangulation and I could use the interpolated "normal" as a value for shading. I could not test it yet but would that work? A special property of the triangulation is that all vertices are on the border so there are no vertices inside the polygon.
Do you guys have a better idea for what I want to achieve?
Here A picture of what it looks right now with the quad solution:

Answer 1

You could render your object twice. A bigger stretched version behind the first one. Not that ideal since a complex object cannot be streched uniformly to create a border.
If you have access to your screen buffer you can render your glow components into a rendertarget and align a full-screen quad to your viewport and add a fullscreen 2D silhouette filter to it.
This way you gain perfect control over the edge by defining its radius, colour, blur. With additional output values such as the RGB values from the object render pass you can even have different advanced glows.
I think rendermonkey had some examples in their shader editor. Its definetly a good starting point to work with and try out things.

Answer 2

Propaply you want calclulate new border vertex list (easy fill example with triangle strip with originals). If you use constant border width and convex polygon its just:
B_new = B - (BtoA.normalised() + BtoC.normalised()).normalised() * width;
If not then it can go more complicated, there is my old but pretty universal solution:
//Helper function. To working right, need that v1 is before v2 in vetex list and vertexes are going to (anti???) cloclwise!
float vectorAngle(Vector2 v1, Vector2 v2){
float alfa;
if (!v1.isNormalised())
v1.normalise();
if (!v2.isNormalised())
v2.normalise();
alfa = v1.dotProduct(v2);
float help = v1.x;
v1.x = v1.y;
v1.y = -help;
float angle = Math::ACos(alfa);
if (v1.dotProduct(v2) < 0){
angle = -angle;
}
return angle;
}
//Normally dont use directly this!
Vector2 calculateBorderPoint(Vector2 vec1, Vector2 vec2, float width1, float width2){
vec1.normalise();
vec2.normalise();
float cos = vec1.dotProduct(vec2); //Calculates actually cosini of two (normalised) vectors (remember math lessons)
float csc = 1.0f / Math::sqrt(1.0f-cos*cos); //Calculates cosecant of angle, This return NaN if angle is 180!!!
//And rest of the magic
Vector2 difrence = (vec1 * csc * width2) + (vec2 * csc * width1);
//If you use just convex polygons (all angles < 180, = 180 not allowed in this case) just return value, and if not you need some more magic.
//Both of next things need ordered vertex lists!
//Output vector is always to in side of angle, so if this angle is.
if (Math::vectorAngle(vec1, vec2) > 180.0f) //Note that this kind of function can know is your function can know that angle is over 180 ONLY if you use ordered vertexes (all vertexes goes always (anti???) cloclwise!)
difrence = -difrence;
//Ok and if angle was 180...
//Note that this can fix your situation ONLY if you use ordered vertexes (all vertexes goes always (anti???) cloclwise!)
if (difrence.isNaN()){
float width = (width1 + width2) / 2.0; //If angle is 180 and border widths are difrent, you cannot get perfect answer ;)
difrence = vec1 * width;
//Just turn vector -90 degrees
float swapHelp = difrence.y
difrence.y = -difrence.x;
difrence.x = swapHelp;
}
//If you don't want output to be inside of old polygon but outside, just: "return -difrence;"
return difrence;
}
//Use this =)
Vector2 calculateBorderPoint(Vector2 A, Vector2 B, Vector2 C, float widthA, float widthB){
return B + calculateBorderPoint(A-B, C-B, widthA, widthB);
}

Answer 3

Your second approach can be possible...
mark the outer vertex (in border) with 1 and the inner vertex (inside) with 0.
in the pixel shader you can choose to highlight, those that its value is greater than 0.9f or 0.8f.
it should work.