Daniel Lehenbauer's Blog

It is perhaps an understatement to say it's been a while since I blogged. As is commonly the case with Microsoft blogs, the reason for going dark is that I left the WPF team almost two years ago for an opportunity I couldn't pass by to join a systems...

[ UPDATE: The Xaml Exporter now is hosted on CodePlex ( here )] I checked in an updated Blender exporter to 3D Tools for Windows Presentation Foundation which adds support for double sided materials and flat shaded geometry. I have not yet package...

I have posted a new release of the 3D Tools for the Windows Presentation Foundation targeting the Beta 2 release of the WinFX runtime . The big addition in this release is a community owned implementation of the ScreenSpaceLines3D class. ScreenSpaceLines3D...

Minor update: The " Extending Visual3D - Sphere, Cone, and Cylinder " sample has been updated to the December and January CTP (either will work). Thanks to Barry Briggs for doing this and sending me the updated source.

[UPDATE: The Xaml Exporter now is hosted on CodePlex ( here ) ] The 3D features in the Windows Presentation Foundation make it easier than ever to integrate 3D content into your applications. However, unless you are satisfied with basic solid geometry...

Ernie posted about the differences between the old LookAtPoint property and the new LookDirection property on ProjectionCamera (via KarstenJ .) The quick summary is that LookAtPoint caused the camera to look at a fixed point in space (Figure 1a). The...

I've packaged a new release of the 3D Tools workspace targeting the December CTP WinFX bits. This release adds two requested features to the ModelViewer sample. The first is the ability to light the scene. This is convenient if you are viewing a model...

Possibly the most common 3D UI paradigm is to rotate an object with the mouse in order to view it from all angles. This is illustrated by the images of the tiger model below: Figure 1a Tiger model in its original configuration...

If you are like me and have been holding off on installing the final version of the .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 until you had Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly code-named Avalon) bits to work with then the wait is over. The November...

Introduction People new to 3D are frequently confused by the extra level of indirection introduced by texture coordinates. 3D veterans familiar with texture coordinates from other platforms are sometimes surprised that the default behavior in the Windows...

Update: The source has been updated for the December or January CTP (either will work). In my previous post I mentioned that one of the motivations for Visual3D was sub-classing. Prior to the September CTP of the Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly...

( NOTE: You might find Karsten's pragmatic perspective a useful prelude before we dive into the artictural underpinnings.) In the September CTP release of the Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly code-named Avalon) we made 3D a first class citizen...

When we decided to integrate 3D into the Windows Presentation Foundation (Avalon) the scenarios we were targeting for v1 were: 3D effects, like a “Next Page” transition that looks like the turning of a page in a book Data visualization (charts...

I have discovered an effective way to make sure you follow up on your promises: arrange to have them captured on video . I had not been able to find the 15 minutes to try Rob’s suggestion for inserting a resource into a collection since November...

Trying to ease back into the community after a short hiatus, I ported the Boing demo that I blogged about back in June to the Avalon CTP build . You can get the updated source here . Just load the solution in to the VS.NET Whidbey Beta and press F5. If...

Like many many others I am also excited about the Avalon CTP release for a number of reasons: It runs on Windows XP! (I no longer need to boot into a separate partition to write samples for my (recently neglected) blog ;) We have the beginnings of tool...

I had mentioned previously that I was dissatisfied with the 1 st post in the 3D for the Rest of Us series because I felt that the post did not leave the reader with anything they could immediately go out and try. I was much happier with the 2 nd post...

Introduction This is the second in a series of posts intended to fill in the missing pieces for a developer familiar with a 2D graphics API who wants to dabble in 3D with the Avalon platform To be honest, I really was not particularily happy with the...

I have been shopping around for a while now for a dynamic language to use when prototyping pet projects at home. Everything I read about Python seemed perfect except, of course, the lack of a .NET compiler. This week Jim Hugunin of Jython fame finally...

Introduction A hallway conversation which Chris Anderson made me realize that when people ask me about 3D support in Avalon I have a bad habit of telling them everything they do not need to know . After all, it is all the details you do not have to...

Coincidently, the same day that Kerry Hammil's talk which featured the 3D Blood Sugar Tracker demo aired Joe Beda managed to get the source hosted at MSDN .

Kerry Hammil, a program manager with the Avalon team, discusses the goals and features of 3D support in Avalon and walks through writing your first Avalon 3D application in this 30 minute video segment ( 56K , 150K or 300K ). You will want to be sure...

One area where the Avalon platform blurs the line between 2D and 3D is with our hit testing services. It's easy to discover that we support traditional ray/mesh hit testing via the Model3D.HitTest(...) API, but rarely does the user want to initiate hit...

MSDN just published an introductory article on 3D support in Avalon by fellow blogger Ian Griffiths of DevelopMentor. The article is liberal with screenshots and provides a good mapping between the high level concepts and the Avalon object model. It's...

I was asked if Longhorn runs on Virtual PC. I haven't tried build 4074 first hand, but according to Stephen McGibbons it is “a breeze” to setup, performance is acceptable, and he even shows it running 3D in his screenshot .