How can I implement this ui design idea?

[Ahmad Auada]

I like the idea behind material design, but thought about coming up with something similar. I wanted to see how my idea would look like, and modeled it with cinema 4d:


Do I have to use open gl or something similar to make my apps look like this? I'm still relatively new to android and never dealt with any thing to do with 3d.
How would you guys tackle this problem?

[Tim Moores]

It's hard to tell from a single mock-up how a UI might look or work, but I don't see why you'd need to use a 3D API, or OpenGL specifically.

Maybe look at some UI libraries that are out there on Github to see how they implement things.

[Karthik Shiraly]

I too don't think you require OpenGL...or even any custom drawing at all for that matter.

The top green rectangular pane (assuming it's just a static background) can simply have its background attribute set to green.

The 2 rectangular blue buttons and the round button can be modeled using shape drawables. See http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/controls/button.html#Style

The maroon items in the middle can be modeled using a ListView where each list item uses your own custom layout XML instead of one of the stock layouts. Each list item too can have its own custom shape if required, just like the buttons.

Give it a shot using regular layouts and controls. I think it's possible to do everything this way, or at least, a large portion of it.
If something doesn't work out, then you can implement your own View subclass for that portion and override onDraw().

[Ahmad Auada]

@Karthik Shiraly yes but this way it wouldn't have all the glow and shadow effects. It would look like a flat ui

[Karthik Shiraly]

Can be achieved using a layerlist, with bottom layer having same shape as the top but larger in area. The "glow" can be a gradient with same hue as control's color but with much higher alphas. The drop shadows can be dark gray again with higher alphas. Doable I think.

[Ahmad Auada]

I will try your idea. Hopefully it will look as expected. Thank you for the suggestion 😃