i'm attempting to create a 3D dice control .
i'm having a hard time finding good tutorial's or source code on WPF 3D with 3D animations
preferably for Blend .
additionally are there any known tools for creating 3D templates with the corresponding triggers and animations which i could use to create a clickable interactive dice for my application .
though this question is quite general i still think it appropriate since materials on this particular subject seems to be hard to come by .
thanks in advance.
A while back i found a very good example here And also, you might want to see helix toolkit it works independent of WPF
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I'm currently in the early stages of a project and have difficulty deciding which framework to use. I hear people say WPF is dead, yet it seems to be the (only?) way to program a Microsoft Surface app. This is one of the possible future aims of the project, but not the main focus.
The main focus however is: both 2d and 3d objects in the same view (and kinect/voice support). Some of the 2d objects are SVG files. From what I have read online so far it's not easy to render SVG graphics in XNA (nor Silverlight 5 3D for that matter). I've seen some SVG to XAML converters, but could the result of this be used in a 3d view? Or vice versa?
Considering it's not going to be a game, but a business application I'm tempted to rule out XNA, but then again I also require good performance as there will be quite some graphical stuff going on and if possible support for high resolutions/video wall. Taking a video wall into consideration would maybe rule out WPF as I've read that it will only use hardware acceleration if the resolution is lower than the texture size limit of the GPU.
There is no intend to run the application in the browser or phone, as such i'm tempted to rule out Silverlight 5.
Any tips would be greatly be appreciated.
Thanks!
I wouldn't rule out XNA on the basis that it's "for games". You can simply use only the parts required for hardware-accelerated 3D rendering and ignore the rest. This is in fact what Silverlight 5 does!
So you may find that your 3D rendering code is the same between XNA and SL5 in any case.
Here is a question about SVG in XNA. Basically answer is: you have to write your own hardware-accelerated SVG renderer - a stupidly difficult task. But if your SVG files never change, you could just use an existing software renderer to render them to a texture.
If you converted your SVG to XAML, you would have to render it to a texture to use it in a SL5 3D view anyway (unless it's an overlay). So there is no big win there. I don't know how 2D-3D compositing works in WPF.
Your decision really depends on whether you would find the built-in functionality that SL5 or WPF provides for user interfaces useful? Seeing as you are basically making your own user interface, you probably would not get much use from the provided 2D interface.
The 3D API that SL5 provides is basically a cut-down version of XNA. The 3D API for WPF looks like it just renders models for you - it does not seem to buy you much over XNA. If you have a compelling reason to use XAML, then WPF may be a good choice. Otherwise I'd go with XNA.
Can any of you tell me of a place that I can download a fancy rotating progressbar? Or else to use WPF to develop one? Problem with that though is I don't have any WPF templates. I am looking for a quick solution also, with little development required.
Basic introduction to templating, has a few examples for ProgressBars as well: MSDN
If you want an indeterminate rotating thing that is fairly easy (e.g. here), but for it to fill up that might be quite difficult.
I would like to display a 3D model in a WPF application (the model is prepared in an external tool such as blender). What is the best practice? Are there any tools to facilitate this? How about rotation/transform performance?
Good question!
The result-answer is depending from your goals.
Approach. You are in interest to put some .3ds(.obj,..) model object as stationary part of your scene without any interactive transformations (moving, scaling and so on). This approach is for simple playing (learning WPF3D) as a rule
Approach. You are thinking to have full interactive part with support any WPF3D transformations within your Viewport3D. This approach is for rich 3D scene manipulations in professional application as a rule.
There are relatively many tools for solve this task, but there is no any case universal solution.
There are two troubles to do this task:
Incompatible formats between tools. For example, one tool creates
.3ds(.obj,..) model, but second tool for translating it into .xaml
(reading .3ds, .obj, ...) do not understand this model.
The model you are prepared in professional tool like 3DMax, ...not
seems so fine in WPF3D.
Moreover it will be very good to change materials in model by the compatible (for further adequate WPF presentation) way.
Be ready experimenting many times for best results...
It seems that you are about 2 point - Approach.
So, best tool for reading .3ds, .obj file is
Helix 3D Toolkit
Recipe is very simple. For example, in VB
Dim CurrentHelix3DSStudioReader As New StudioReader()
Dim MyToyModel3DGroup as Model3DGroup = CurrentHelix3DSStudioReader.Read("MyToy.3ds")
Or
Dim CurrentHelixObjReader As New ObjReader()
Dim MyToyModel3DGroup as Model3DGroup = CurrentHelixObjReader.Read("MyToy.obj")
Best tool for manipulation .3ds, .obj, ... models including saving in .xaml is Deep Exploration. My sample in WPF 3D scene. Fast full managed object
Zam3d is was a great tool for converting 3D Models into Xaml, but it looks like Electric Rain has gone defunct, you may be able to find a copy somewhere by Googling for it. I highly recomend Petzold's book 3D Programming for Windows. There are also a ton of tutorials online, I would google for some modern ones.
You can import and convert OBJ-Files to XAML using "Blend for Visual Studio" please take a look here:
alternative-to-zam-3d-editor
You can use 3dsmax and convert your model by
Xaml exporter for 3D Studio Max.
I'm creating a training lab for a desktop application.
Basically it'll be a series of screenshots with hotspots, when the user clicks in the right spot it advances to the next screenshot. There will also be some simple text input, so a textbox will need be overlaid over some of the screenshots. The logic is simply if the user enters the right thing they get to move to the next screen.
Adobe Captivate or good old timeline-based Flash is great for creating stuff like this. But this project has to be Silverlight. I considered using Captivate along with a swf to silverlight converter, but I believe those converters only support animations not logic.
The question is: what is the easiest way to create this type of thing in Silverlight? Can Expression Blend do it? Other alternatives? Ideally little programming is required.
Blend is great for this, you may also want to try using Sketchflow to prototype it quickly http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/SketchFlow_OverView.aspx
Using Expression Blend's behaviours and storyboards makes it easy to create an application with no code in no time.
I am considering using Silverlight for a project I am working on. This project will need to show a 3-Dimensional cube. Is this possible in Silverlight?
I see a lot of examples that a basically 2-sides of one item. Kind of like a sheet of paper. Is this what "perspective" 3D is? How is perspective 3D different than normal 3D?
Thank you!
You should look at Kit3D for Silverlight. Someone also created a silverlight3d.com site, but it current just has three reference articles and a link to Kit3D.
It is also possible to emulate 3D as demonstrated by this MSDN article.
The feature that was added in Silverlight 3 is referred to as "perspective 3D" to avoid confusion that might arise with someone expecting it be some kind of full scale 3d rendering API (like DirectX or OpenGl etc.) or something like WPFs UIElement3D.
The "perspective 3D" feature in Silverlight allows you to take any regular 2D UIElement and rotate it in 3D dimensions; you can think of it like a more powerful RenderTransform. There are two ways of setting a "Projection" on a UIElement, with a PlaneProjection (simple) or with a Matrix3DProjection (more complex).
You could certainly use this feature to create a 3D cube, where each face of the cube is a UIElement with a Projection applied to it. However you would not use this feature to create something that required complex 3d models such as a 3D game.