WPF3D Team Blog

Interacting with 2D placed on 3D is now possible in v1 of the Windows Presentation Foundation! In between shipping Vista and planning the next version of WPF, we realized that with a clever implementation it was possible to provide this feature today...

With the release of WPF 3.5 beta 2 (download here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D2F74873-C796-4E60-91C8-F0EF809B09EE&displaylang=en ), we’ve added some exciting new features to WPF 3D. At a very high level these can be...

Subclassing from UIElement3D to create your own elements that respond to input, focus and eventing is simple to do in 3.5. In this example we'll create a Sphere class which derives from UIElement3D and will show off some new features in the process. ...

.NET 4.0 Beta 1 was released a few weeks ago and there’s a lot to it that you can read about elsewhere so I thought I would just stick to what’s changed for WPF graphics. These are the biggest things of note: RenderOptions.ClearTypeHint : If WPF renders...

Last beta I mentioned we were saving the best for Beta 2 so thank you for waiting :) New Features The PixelShader class now accepts Pixel Shader 3.0 shaders when your hardware supports them. Important : There is no software rendering for PS 3.0. For example...

What Material you choose will impact your GeometryModel3D in three ways: Lighting model Depth write Blend with the back buffer The first one is straightforward since it's right in the name of the Material plus it's documented. The last...

We affectionately refer to DiffuseMaterial.Color, DiffuseMaterial.AmbientColor, SpecularMaterial.Color, and EmissiveMaterial.Color as the "color knobs." The color knobs are probably the least understood WPF3D feature because they were one of the last...

As we mentioned earlier in this blog post , the default BitmapScalingMode has changed from Fant to Linear. If you compile your app for 4.0 and notice scaled bitmaps looking worse, this is why. If you want the old look, set the mode back to Fant. Fant...

The WPF Feature Montage has been updated to include a custom transition control that contains four 3D transitions: page turn, curtain pull, explosion, and door open. The full source is included in the zip. -- Jordan P.S. For those of you who saw...

In 3.5 SP1 it was really easy to leak memory when doing software 3D rendering involving a VisualBrush or DrawingBrush. We got this complaint many times online and in person. Unfortunately, there is no work around. It’s described in “Issue 2” from this...

Sorry for the lack of updates, but we've been pretty busy. On what, you may ask? Our PM, David Teitlebaum, just did a video on Channel 9 showing off the new features. He starts by covering interactive 2D on 3D and improved layered window support, both...

If the WPF render thread is doing software rendering, D3DImage will not show up. I don't think we specifically called this out in the documentation so it can come as a surprise when you first encounter it. Off the top of my head, here are times when the...

Augmented Reality is the process of taking real world data, typically video, and enhancing it with computer graphics. Casey used WPF3D along with an AR toolkit and DirectShow to get some great results. Check out the sweet video ! -- Jordan P.S....

Charles Petzold has posted his WPF3D library on the web. It includes sphere, cube, cylinder, torus, line, and teapot mesh generation. Buying his book 3D Programming for Windows grants you royalty-free use of the library so be sure to check it out!...

Robert Hogue has updated the Python script with a bunch of new features. See this forum post for the instructions, tutorials, and demos! -- Jordan

How to do 3D hit testing has come up a bit recently in the forums but essentially it isn’t any different than 2D hit testing which is described on MSDN here . You can either start with a 2D point on the Viewport3D or a 3D point on a Visual3D. Starting...

We use the standard fixed-function Blinn-Phong model . You can read up on all of the equations here at MSDN. If you have a Tier 2 card, we actually do our lighting in a vertex shader. If you don’t have a Tier 2 card, we do the lighting on the CPU. Why...

We gave a lecture on 3D yesterday at a "WPF Bootcamp" event and I've attached the slides. Here's the outline: Intro to WPF3D with a simple example Interactive 2D on 3D Performance tips (based on this paper ) -- Jordan

If you've never encountered texture coordinates before, DanLehen has a detailed introduction that you can find here . If you have used texture coordinates before in another API you may have noticed that we are a little different. Here's what you need...

Soon we'll be posting things like design tips, perf tricks, feature discussions, 3D basics, and more but until then check out these existing resources: DanLehen's blog 3DTools for WPF WPF MSDN Forums Jordan Parker Software Design Engineer

It sounds like the Shaxam folks are improving their Lightwave to XAML exporter. Richard Godfrey has two fantastic examples up on his blog . Chris Cavanagh has created a little 3D physics XBAP demo and he has also posted the source . Japan's famous...

We just released the 1.01 version of the 3DTools for the Windows Presentation Foundation. This update fixes a few small bugs found in the 1.0 release. You can get the new version from here: http://www.codeplex.com/3DTools/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx...

In the Channel9 video showing the 2D on 3D feature found in the 3DTools Codeplex project, we demoed a photo browsing application that made use of 2D on 3D and that talked to Flickr for images. I'm happy to announce that the source code for this application...

Turning the Pages 2.0 by Armadillo Systems uses WPF3D to allow you to manipulate books in 3D space and collaborate with other readers. The British Library is using it for a few of the books in their remarkable collection. Thanks to this app, two of Leonardo...

Apologies for the lack of updates recently, but we were busy preparing an internal lecture on WPF3D. The good news is we created a lot of content and we'll start posting parts of it soon. Also, we think we fixed the broken images. If you see any more...