Pixel level 2D Graphics in Silverlight - silverlight

I am trying to port a WebForms app to Silverlight, this application is using the GDI Graphics class to draw polygons to a in-memory bitmap, it will then do pixel by pixel comparisons so I need access to the pixel buffer.
Example:
Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bmp);
g.FillClosedCurve(brush, points, FillMode.Winding);
I have done some serious googling trying to figure out how to draw polygons and then be able to access the pixel buffer of the canvas surface. My findings indicate that this is not possible with the WPF silverlight graphics, so I need to use a custom graphics library but have only found some 3D libraries. Is there a simple 2D library for silverlight or should I just go a head and write a polygon render algorithm myself?

If you write a polygon rendering algorithm for Silverlight, it would have to be all managed code, I haven't seen any examples of this, but if you write one let me know, I've been looking for something like the for XNA.
Silverlight 3 should be adding some of the things you need to make this a lot easier like rendering to a texture and accessing a bitmap at the pixel level.

Could you grab an image from a server and process that? You could dynamically generate the image and you'd have access to whatever you needed outside of Silverlight.

Related

Implementing true Pinch and Zoom in the OxyPlot 2D library with MonoTouch

For plotting graphs I used the coreplot library for a while in my MonoTouch based iPhone app, but with iOS 6.0 the already annoying binding problems become so many that I decided to drop it for a library natively written in C#.
Searching around I found the excellent OxyPlot 2D library, and more specifically the MonoTouch port made by dvkwong.
The library works fine and has tons of useful features, but its output is just a rendered bitmap UIImage.
This means that I need to add myself the pinch and zoom features to the library.
The current implementation, based on the dvkwong preliminary example, uses the UIScrollView to zoom and unzoom the resulting bitmap image added to a simple subview.
This is not a good solution because when zooming the aliasing of the bitmap is made visible , and if the resolution is increased the text fonts becomes unreadable because are not optimized for the current zoom resolution.
I need to render the image each time at the correct resolution, without using UIScrollView but just overriding the DrawRect() call in a custom UIView.
But how to reproduce the the pinch-zoom gesture of Apple UIScrollView and draw the correct subrect of the OxyPlot plot model?
I tried to implement this method suggested here:
position the pinched view between the two fingers
But it doesn't work because I need to know the sub rect to draw, not applying a transformation matrix. Also there is no "draw sub rect" method in the OxyPlot library, so I need to set a cliprect in the image context and drawing a bigger image first and then clipping it. This is clearly too slow, because at some zoom levels the image can become huge (and I need the user to be able to zoom indefinitely on any part of the graph).
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
I solved the problem myself.
I've created another MonoTouch port of the OxyPlot 2D library, this time supporting both Pan & Pinch-Zoom gestures. I've also added iPad support.
Now we have a native C# plot library for MonoTouch.
You can download it under the MIT Licence here:
https://github.com/Emasoft/OxyPlot.2DGraphLib.MonoTouch

Rendering WPF controls on planes in 3D space

I have the following setup: I can track a surface very accuratly in a 3d space using a tracking system. Now I want to project on this plane with an overhead projector.
I want to develop my interface in WPF/XAML and then render it in real time to the surface that is tracked. But I don't know exactly how to do it...
This is what I think: I need to model the tracked surface in a 3D space, then I want to develop the interface using regular WPF/XAML controls use (maybe) directx to render these controls to model in 3D that represent the tracked surface.
I already found information of using directx in combination with wpf (Sharpdx.WPF) but here they demonstrate how to create 3d scenes with wpf... However, they don't show how to use regular WPF controls and render these to the 3d models.
Do I first need to convert the user control of WPF/XAML to an image and then render it to the 3d model or is there another way to do it?

Is there a way to animate the edges of an image in WPF?

We have a few icons in our WPF application. We want to do an animation, pretty much like a small beacon of light going around the edges of the animation, just endlessly going around it, and following the silhouette of the icons. We found a way to do it by manually creating a path around the icons and have the beacon follow that path (which matches the silhouette), but it's too much manual work because we have a lot of different shaped icons. We're wondering if there's a way for WPF to do this automatically, so we just have to program it once, and then using on the rest of the icons.
Any suggestion very welcome.
Thanks.
Edit
Something like this.
Gee. Isn't that overkill to use wpf animation capabilities for that? Can't you just create a bunch of small animations in Photoshop or using something else and just put them in?
Like animated .GIFs. the only problem would be that: if I'm remembering it right, WPF have problems with animating .GIFs as embedded resources. So you have to load them from the disk. Or you can have them as embedded resources, but you have to extract them temporarily to the disk and then load them into your app's window.
If you are using .NET 3.5 SP1 or greater and you are requiring a code solution instead of the animated GIFs, my suggestion would be a Pixel Shader. You would need to write your own Pixel Shader that does the following:
Detect the edges. http://www.codeproject.com/KB/openGL/EdgeDetection.aspx
Takes an input parameter that can be animated with a storyboard that indicates the position of the beacon. http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dialog/WpfParentWindowShader.aspx
Highlights the edge that is indicated by the beacon position parameter and returns the original color for all other points in the image.
If you haven't worked with Pixel Shaders I would recommend downloading the Shazzam Tool, http://shazzam-tool.com/. It includes an interactive development environment to create and test your shader on simple images and also includes a decent number of Pixel Shaders with source code to help you learn about them.

Display 360 Image in Silverlight 3.0 (Not Panorama)

I have a lot of images taken from a 360 camera which I would like to be able to display in Silverlight 3. They are NOT regular panorama images. The camera which took the image actually creates a distorted jpeg that becomes undistorted once wrapped around a sphere as a texture. I have desktop software that will allow viewing of the image (not just side-to-side, but straight up, down, etc.) and I need to try to get the same functionality in Silverlight. It is very similar to Google StreetView.
What I think I need is to create a sphere, wrap the jpeg on the sphere as a texture, then put the "camera" inside the sphere. I doubt this is possible in Silverlight, but perhaps there is a way to simulate this?
So far, Google searches aren't bringing anything up. Can anyone point me in the right direction to figure out how to do this? Are there any existing projects that do this?
An example of a typical image is here.
These might help you out (probably not). They are 3d engines for silverlight, but they will probably wrap the image outside of the sphere instead of inside, which is probably what you need.
Kit3D http://www.codeplex.com/Kit3D
Balder http://www.codeplex.com/Balder
Another, possibly more promising option, would be to use javascript. So far you've probably researched how to do this in Silverlight, but you might do some similar searching for using javascript for this. There may be an option out there already, and since Silverlight can interopt with Javascript, you might be in luck.
Your gonna have to map the texture to a sphere then, like you said. But afaik silverlight 3 doesn't support hardware accelerated 3d.
So your options are:
Try and find a silverlight software 3d library (Like this)
Write your own software rasterizer (multi page guide)
Hope this helps
You might want to try cropping a window from the image and display it. if the user want to go right, move the window right and crop. if the user wants to go left, move the window left and crop. to zoom out, expand the window, to zoom in make the window smaller. if you move the frame far right then stitch the image data from the left side.
You might need to modify the image to eliminate the distortion, this shouldn't be too hard and depends on the camera lens focal length.
Don't try mapping the image to a sphere, it is much harder.
At https://hdviewsl.codeplex.com it says that HD View SL (Silverlight version) supports
"orthographic (2D), with wrapping for 360-degree panoramas"
Also you could try to port PtViewer source code to Silverlight from Java if no one else has
UPDATE:
VRLight might be the solution in your case:
http://vrlight.thecloudsite.net/
http://vrlight.thecloudsite.net/tutorial.html
http://ivrpa.org/blog/3651/vrlight_vredit_20
Its author (Jurgen Eidt) is also making cPicture (http://cpicture.thecloudsite.net/index.en.html), if you can't find him from the VRLight site, try from the cPicture one, or try from his blog at IVRPA website (http://ivrpa.org/blog/3651), which seems to have recent posts

Deep zoom on dynamically generated 3D image cube

I am making a 3D cube using kit3D.this cube is generated at run time.I wanted to know whether i will be able to add deep zoom o this dynamically generated 3D cube.The entire cube is ultimately an image and this is loaded altogather at a time.or is there any other way where in I can get the deep zoom effect???
Thanks
In Silverlight 2 this can't be done as we've not made allowances for a lot of perspective 3D transforms as we have in Silverlight 3.
In Silverlight 3 you should be able to perform this, but do remember that Deep Zoom is somewhat an adjustment to the end users UX, so zooming in and out on image sets whilst in a 3D face can be considered cumbersome if not handled appropriately.
Scott Barnes / Rich Platforms Product Manager / Microsoft.

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