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.
Related
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
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.
I learning wpf/silverlight currently. I want to ask which one of them is better for graphics, 3d, ... ?
People say "Silverlight is a subset of WPF" -- what they mean is that the programming model is the same (code + XAML), but Silverlight generally has a smaller API / less features than WPF.
I think a good example would be creating a reflection. In WPF you could use a VisualBrush, but Silverlight doesn't support it. Still you can create the same effect by creating a 2nd transformed element. You can pretty much acomplish the same task in both, although for Silverlight you may have to do some processing tasks on the server.
The choice of platform depends more on whether you want to target web deployment or not and possibly performance.
3D isn't implemented in Silverlight 4 (though there are 3D libraries out there). 3D will be part of Silverlight 5. (Beta coming soon, probably at MIX, and to be released this year.)
i would sugest wpf in WPF you have all the Viewport sutff where you can do real 3d, In Silverlight you have PlaneTransformation but it is not close to real 3d
WPF 3d tutorial
The deal is more deeper as I understand.
We will speak about WPF and Silverlight 5. There are two mechanisms of 3D Graphics. Before WPF it was a single one - so named pipeline graphics. It includes DirectX, OpenGL and multiple derivative and independent realizations (XNA from DirectX, for example). Although WPF is based internally on DirectX it realizes absolutely different conception of smart graphics. What is the difference for a pipeline and smart mechanism? The pipeline mechanism consists of infinity loop of drawing objects - typically primitives like vertex, triangles. It works by initialization of so named infinity loop by calling something like OnDraw/ReDraw method.
WPF does not use ReDraw and does not draw anything until we directly detect it. It is single correct way to use it. Therefore WPF allows to draw UI Elements with internal support of hundreds events, methods and full freedom of management (like usual WPF control - textbox, for example). (Helix 3D is good library for easy way to WPF 3D) And vice versa, Silverlight 5 has some API of XNA graphics - pipeline way without UIElement support for 3D objects.
There is Kit3D library http://kit3d.codeplex.com/ as very good idea for smart graphic realization for Silverlight and there are many other realizations (Balder, Babylon) on pipeline mechanism. If you are interesting to code an application like web 3D Game - choose pipeline Silverlight 3D graphics, if you are interesting about smart 3D applications - choose WPF 3D.
Author of WPF 3D CAE system TIMO Structural.
We have a project that requires to display a 3D object on the browser and get user's feedback from the mouse click. For example, if the user clicks one part of the 3D object, we should display an annotation text, etc.
What kind of technique we have to use?
ASP.NET? SilverLight?
Thank you
// updated based on one of comments
The 3D object is not an image of 3D object. It is a real 3D object constructed from 3D meshes. The application needs to provide all common operations for the user so that the user can pan, rotate, zoom, annotate the 3D object.
Thank you
The perspective projection features of Silverlight aren't really suitable for complex meshes, so your best bet is probably a 3D engine such as Balder. I haven't used it but the sample browser seems fairly comprehensive.
SilverMotion is the most advanced software 3d engine for Silverlight I know of. Check out the demo: http://postvision.net/SilverMotion/DemoTech.aspx. Kit3d is another engine, but I don't know if it is supported or not. Balder was already mentioned.
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.