Canvas Dynamically change a bitmap's z-index

Question

I am creating an Android app and in my app I have a canvas which I draw numerous bitmaps to the canvas via the canvas.drawBitmap () function. From my understanding the z-index on these bitmaps are set based on the order in which they are being drawn to the canvas. What I am trying to figure out is after drawing these bitmaps if I can dynamically change the z-index on a bitmap to push it to the top? This seems like a very simple problem, but I have had not luck in finding a solution yet.

Answer 1

Not really possible: after you call drawBitmap the contents of the bitmap are rendered onto the canvas, but the canvas does not store any references to the original bitmap, it only stores the results of applying the bitmap's contents to the canvas. There is no way to dynamically say that bitmap you drew 1st out of 50, I want you to make that the 50th bitmap and automatically redraw every single other bitmap to reflect the change.

So you'll need to order your drawing operations before hand.