Best way to render java?

Question

I'm getting into game development in java and I've watching videos about it and so far I've seen two ways of rendering:

1-Create an buffered image, change the pixels individualy each frame and then draw the image (eg to draw a rectangle by changing the pixels of the image to a color)

2-Instead of changing the pixels just draw stuff over other stuff with the graphics methods, and cleaning the canvas each frame (eg to draw a rectangle just use graphics.drawRect(...)

So, what is the best way and what are the pros and cons of each method? Because the 2nd method seems way easier.

Answer 1

Software rendering is still an option.

If you use Frame implementing Runnable it is faster to declare paint() and repaint() as {} and do the drawing in a loop inside run().

for example...

 private static MemoryImageSource imgSrc;
 private static DirectColorModel  imgCm = new  DirectColorModel(32,0xff0000,0xff00,0xff); 
 private static Image             img;
 private static int               xsize = 256;
 private static int               ysize = 256;
 private static int               pixels[];
 private static int               appLeft = 0;
 private static int               appTop  = 0;

 private static void init() { // initialize
   imgSrc = new MemoryImageSource(xsize, ysize, pixels, 0, xsize);
   img    = createImage(imgSrc);
   imgSrc.setAnimated(true);
   imgSrc.newPixels(pixels, imgCm, 0, xsize);
   appLeft = getInsets().left;
   appTop  = getInsets().top;
 }

 public void run() {
  Graphics g;
  for(;;) {
   // .... render something here
   // then...
   g = getGraphics();
   imgSrc.newPixels();              // NOTE: renders array to image
   g.drawImage(scr, appLeft, appTop, this);
   g.dispose();
  }
 }