I plan to make some motion graphics for my WPF app mainly for screen transitions. Before I jump in to do it, I would like to know if it is possible to export those animations to WPF or I can use only the built in tools to make animations? Or shall I use a sort of image sequence player in WPF for this?
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I need to draw complicated chart (something like in the picture).
As I am developing WinForms app, I would like to show that chart in my window. What I am looking for is some library that would allow me to do that. I found ChartControl, but it seems to be a bit primitive and insufficient for my needs.
Do you know some libraries that would let me draw complex charts? Compatibility with winForms is not priority, but I would like to generate that chart using C#.
From within WinForms you can use the System.Drawing namespace to do your own drawing.
For a chart as complex as this, there is a great likelihood that you will be able to write your own code to draw it in less time than it will take you to learn some existing library (which was built primarily for bar charts) and coerce it to draw such a chart for you.
I'm building a personal animation tool in Winforms and having trouble conceptualizing which toolbox component would be best to create an animation timeline from much like the timeline within Maya.
The criteria is a single layer (unlike Flash) that when played, a simple line over the layer will scroll across from left->right based on the duration settings (maximum of 60 fps).
What I'm looking for is advice on the best component with the toolbox to base the timeline off of.
i am learning WPF. i saw a very beautiful application called Blu Twitter client developed with WPF. their UI is really glossy.
can anyone give me some tips that how could i create this type of glossy UI with WPF. what i need to do.......need concept.
thanks
Get Expression Blend (it's free if you are student), it is fairly easy to create some fancy UIs with it - it has really nice graphical designer.
Here is tutorial, which explains how to make such glossy control: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mgrayson/archive/2007/02/16/creating-a-glass-button-the-complete-tutorial.aspx . This covers basics of how to compose the graphics from gradients and similar graphical primitives and how to make it react on mouse actions.
But be warned: it takes some graphical talent to actually create original graphics! The design above is clearly a work of graphical artist, even though I don't like it - I hate the preudo-3D effect on the navigation buttons, window state controls and message boxes. And similar window transparency tends to be counter-productive.
EDIT:
Note that Expression Blend is since the 2012 release part of the Visual Studio.
Or in addition to mzabsky's suggestion, if you want a more programming approach, the key here is to restyle some of the existing WPF controls. The UI in your picture is not too complex, a main list, a toolbar perhaps at the bottom, a decorator in the upper left corner, some grid/panel layout, nothing unusual, but they are heavily re-styled. Other than that, a couple well-chosen colors with transparency (maybe some color animations for hovering too).
As a starting point, you should get yourself familiar with control restyling in WPF.
How can I achieve 8-bit graphics effect using Silverlight?
I want to make retro game for WP7 using Silverlight.
Should I use canvas and rectangle for this?
There is no built-in functionality for this. Since you are developing a game, you will have to create a custom layer engine that will be able to place colored rectangles in different zones of the screen, therefore achieving the desired effect.
In my company we have in mind a redesign of the user interface of an application and we would like to make it ... let say "fancy". We have in mind a simple story board but I doubt between WPF, XNA or DirectX. I prefer WPF so I'd need to know if it support the following capabilities and how difficult to implement are they:
Transparency: We'd like to display information layers on top of the main display.
3D support: We want network nodes (part of the interface is a network graphic) to be simple spheres connected with lines in a 3D enviroment, and the ability to control the camera so rotation of the screen is possible.
Effects: Such as shading, lens flare or glow to "signal" the discovery or deletion of a node.
Text animations: Specifically the ability to display the text as if it's being written... You know, the information text will be "filling" the panel top down, left to right...
Good news. WPF is the technology you want and it can handle your requirements with relative ease.
Transparency is simple.
3D support is good as well. For an example, check out Tim Sneath: Five Great WPF 3D Nuggets. You even get hardware acceleration.
Effects are definitely do-able via timeline animations.
The previous statement goes double for Text Animations.
...the hardest part would be the 3D support, but it's still going to be a lot easier than getting things done in XNA or using DirectX libraries directly.
AFAIK WPF 3.5 supports all of this, and even leverages hardware acceleration to get a decent performance.
It's possible to embed an XNA application in a WPF form so you could use XNA for the representation of your network and WPF controls for the GUI in front of it.