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I'm writing a program that creates animated blobs in 2D, to simulate cells. In order to beautify these objects, I'd like to give them a 3D look by adding a bevel-effect. How can this be achieved?

Program as it looks now (the blobs are animated, move, change shape etc):

And this could be a potential desired outcome:

I underscore that I'm not using anything else than GDI+, so I'll have to write the implementation myself. Virtually every graphics program has some kind of beveling filter, but I've looked high and low online to find examples of such code.

I'm writing a program that creates animated blobs in 2D, to simulate cells. In order to beautify these objects, I'd like to give them a 3D look by adding a bevel-effect. How can this be achieved?

Program as it looks now (the blobs are animated, move, change shape etc):

And this could be a potential desired outcome:

I underscore that I'm not using anything else than GDI+, so I'll have to write the implementation myself. Virtually every graphics program has some kind of beveling filter, but I've looked high and low online to find examples of such code.

Edit:

I was testing a few theories, and this one could work. However, it's not my most optimal solution (even though Gaussian blurs can be made linear using separable kernels) and I have another in the working. Anyway, this could be a first attempt at a fast beveling algorithm:

The result in the picture I created above is the direct outcome of the steps of the algorithm, but I suspect it might run too slow for 25fps.

I'm writing a program that creates animated blobs in 2D, to simulate cells. In order to beautify these objects, I'd like to give them a 3D look by adding a bevel-effect. How can this be achieved?

I underscore that I'm not using anything else than GDI+, so I'll have to write the implementation myself. Virtually every graphics program has some kind of beveling filter, but I've looked high and low online to find examples of such code.

I'm writing a program that creates animated blobs in 2D, to simulate cells. In order to beautify these objects, I'd like to give them a 3D look by adding a bevel-effect. How can this be achieved?

Program as it looks now (the blobs are animated, move, change shape etc):

And this could be a potential desired outcome:

I underscore that I'm not using anything else than GDI+, so I'll have to write the implementation myself. Virtually every graphics program has some kind of beveling filter, but I've looked high and low online to find examples of such code.

I'm writing a program that creates animated blobs in 2D, to simulate cells. In order to beautify these objects, I'd like to give them a 3D look by adding a bevel-effect. How can this be achieved?

I underscore that I'm not using anything else than GDI+, so I'll have to write the implementation myself. Virtually every graphics program has some kind of beveling filter, but I've looked high and low online to find examples of such code.

I'm writing a program that creates animated blobs in 2D, to simulate cells. In order to beautify these objects, I'd like to give them a 3D look by adding a bevel-effect. How can this be achieved?

I underscore that I'm not using anything else than GDI+, so I'll have to write the implementation myself. Virtually every graphics program has some kind of beveling filter, but I've looked high and low online to find examples of such code.