I am very happy to announce that a new version of all our products is available.

The biggest improvement of the new version is better support for Window 8. This includes improved installer that now works correctly without .Net 2.0 installed on the system. Also the Viewer3ds, ViewerSvg and Paste2Xaml applications are now build on .Net 4.0 framework and do not require .Net 3.5 any more. The applications also use different obfuscation method - the previous obfuscation crashed the applications on startup in Windows 8.

What is more, the ViewerSvg and Paste2Xaml now fully support exporting XAML for Windows Store applications (Windows Runtime). This means that you can use almost any svg file, metafile or get drawing from clipboard and use ViewerSvg or Paste2Xaml to create vector graphics for Windows Store applications.

With this release all libraries now target .Net 3.5 Client profile (before some of them targered .Net 3.0).
As before all the libraries also contain an additional assembly that is built on .Net 4.0 framework.

This version also brings some additional improvements to Ab3d.PowerToys, Ab3d.Reader3ds and ZoomPanel libraries.

The following are the changed in the Ab3d.PowerToys:

• Added GetCameraPosition method to BaseCamera.
• Fixed creating geometry for Visual 3D objects when no property is changed on the visual (for example if default size is used).
• Fixed showing long 3D lines that cross the near camera plane (before such lines were not correctly shown).
• Improved measuring size of CameraControlPanel - now it is possible to define only desired Width or Height and the control automatically sets the other (Height or Width).
• In MouseCameraController the StartMouseProcessing and EndMouseProcessing are now protected virtual and can be overriden (before they were private).
• Improved creation of sphere mesh - before some triangles were defined in such a way that they represented a line instead of triangle (two positions in the triangle were defined in the same position in space).
• Added possibility to create a slightly improved sphere mesh when there is no need to create texture coordinates (this can be done with specifying generateTextureCoordinates as false in the Ab3d.Meshes.SphereMesh3D constructor).
• Added DumpMatrix3D to Dumper class.
• Improved FpsMeter when custom DisplayFormatString property is set.
• Fixed creating PolyLines when they are created with duplicate positions - Index out of range exception was thrown before.

There is also a new and very interesting sample available with the new Ab3d.PowerToys. A screenshot from the sample is shown in the image above. The sample is showing how to create a simple 3D editor. It allows the user to create 3D boxes with the mouse (the current position of the mouse in the 3D scene is shown with two green lines). The box is created by first defining the base rectangle with dragging the mouse and then defining the height with moving the mouse up and clicking at desired height. The sample also shows how to create simple snap to grid. User can rotate or move the camera around. It is also possible to change camera to show all the objects (zoom to content).

The Ab3d.PowerToys help has also been improved. It now contains the "Quick start tutorial" that is basically the content of one of my previous blog posts. What is more, there is also a "Tips and Tricks" help section that describes some techniques that can help or improve working with WPF 3D. I will write the content of that help section in my next post.


And the following are two additional changed in Ab3d.Reader3ds:

• Added CreateTextureCallback delegate to Reader3ds - it can be used to customize the process of creating the texture images.
• Fixed reading 3ds files that define material with names longer than 17 characters (the 3ds documentation defines max length of material name to be 17 characters - but it looks that in reality the material names can be longer).

As mentioned before, ZoomPanel also has an improvement. But not in the library itself but as an additional sample that describes how to limit the zoom to specific zoom factor.

As always if you are new to our tools, you are most welcome to download a 60-day trial from the Download page. Existing customers can get the updated versions from their User Account page.

A new maintenance release for Ab3d.PowerToys and ZoomPanel is available.

It fixes an issue with new designer in Visual Studio 2012. This was most noticeable when a camera from Ab3d.PowerToys was not manually connected to Viewport3D. In that case the code in the camera automatically checks the objects hierarchy and tries to find the Viewport3D automatically. But because the designer in VS 2012 is changed, the code did not find the Viewport3D and therefore the preview of 3D scene in the designer did not show the scene from the specified position.

The new version of Ab3d.PowerToys library also has the following changes:

• Fixed a typo with renaming the WireBoxVisual3 into WireBoxVisual3D (BREAKING CHANGE!)
• Improved 3D Text - now ? character is correctly displayed instead of a character that does not have its 3D shape defined
• Fixed problem with displaying 3D Text in Visual Studio designer

A new version of ZoomPanel library also fixes an issue where a "Reference not set to an object" exception was thrown when ZoomPanelMiniMap was added to controls tree but was visible and then the user changed zoom mode on the ZoomController.

In the blog posts that were posted so far I was mostly describing new versions of the products. During recent vacation at seaside I have decided to change that and prepare blog posts that would present some of the features of Ab3d.PowerToys and Ab3d.Reader3ds libraries.

I would also like to persuade you that WPF 3D with Ab3d.PowerToys and Ab3d.Reader3ds libraries is the best platform for building business applications that require 3D graphics.


Ab3d.PowerToys library greatly simplifies work with WPF 3D and make WPF 3D the easiest platform for business applications that require 3D graphics.

In this blog post I will try to write about some of the basic new concepts that are introduced with the library.

This post is divided into the following sections:

1. Basic 3D scene setup
2. Cameras
3. 3D Objects
4. Showing objects from 3ds files
5. Conclusion

1) Basic 3D scene setup

This section shows how to prepare an XAML file to show 3D content.
First we need to add a reference to the Ab3d.PowerToys library. Then the following namespace declarations are usually added to the XAML file:

xmlns:cameras="clr-namespace:Ab3d.Cameras;assembly=Ab3d.PowerToys"
xmlns:controls="clr-namespace:Ab3d.Controls;assembly=Ab3d.PowerToys"  
xmlns:visuals="clr-namespace:Ab3d.Visuals;assembly=Ab3d.PowerToys"

cameras namespace defines the possible cameras (SceneCamera, FirstPersonCamera, ThirdPersonCamera, etc.)

controls namespace defines controls that will be used to control the camera (MouseCameraController, CameraControlPanel).

visuals namespace defines 3D objects that can be added to Viewport3D (BoxVisual3D, SphereVisual3D, ConeVisual3D, LineVisual3D, WireBoxVisual3D, HeightMapVisual3D and many more).

Now we can define our 3D scene with the following XAML:

<Border Name="ViewportBorder" Background="Transparent">
    <Viewport3D Name="MainViewport">
    </Viewport3D>
</Border>

<cameras:SceneCamera Name="Camera1" Heading="40" Attitude="-20" Bank="0" 
                     Distance="250" ShowCameraLight="Always"
                     TargetViewport3D="{Binding ElementName=MainViewport}"/>

<controls:CameraControlPanel VerticalAlignment="Bottom" HorizontalAlignment="Left" 
                             Margin="5" Width="225" Height="75" 
                             ShowMoveButtons="True"
                             TargetCamera="{Binding ElementName=Camera1}"/>

<controls:MouseCameraController UsedMouseButton="Left" 
                                TargetCamera="{Binding ElementName=Camera1}"
                                EventsSourceElement="{Binding ElementName=ViewportBorder}"/>

<controls:CameraAxisPanel HorizontalAlignment="Right" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" />

First we defined a Border that contains an empty Viewport3D control. Then we added SceneCamera, CameraControlPanel (shows buttons to control the camera), MouseCameraController (use mouse to control the camera) and CameraAxisPanel (shows the orientation of the coordinate axes).


An interesting difference from standard WPF’s way is that the camera is not defined inside Viewport3D but outside it as a standard control. The reason for that is that all WPF’s cameras are sealed or contain internal virtual methods that cannot be defined in derived class. Therefore it is not possible to derive custom cameras from any WPF’s camera.

Before describing the cameras let me first describe how the added controls are connected to each other.

First we need to connect our SceneCamera to the Viewport3D. The connected Viewport3D will be controlled by our SceneCamera. This can be done with setting the TargetViewport3D property on SceneCamera. Using that property and simple binding is the most efficient way to connect the camera to the Viewport3D. But it is not the only possible way to do it. Instead it would be also possible to set TargetViewport3DName property to “Camera1”. It would be even possible to skip both that properties. In that case the camera would check the WPF controls tree and connect to the first found Viewport3D. Because the code where the TargetViewport3D property is set with binding is executed slightly faster that other methods, it is recommended to use it. But when there are only a few controls defined in the parent Window or UserControl, it is also ok to skip the TargetViewport3D definition and let the camera to connect automatically. In case when you want to connect the camera to the Viewport3D later in code and do not define TargetViewport3D and TargetViewport3DName in XAML, you can set the IsAutoViewport3DFindingEnabled to false to prevent the automatic camera connection.

In a similar way the CameraControlPanel and the MouseCameraController are connected to the SceneCamera. As with the camera we could use TargetCameraName property or skip the TragetCamera property and leave the control to find the Camera automatically by searching the objects tree.

The MouseCameraController is also connected to the ViewportBorder element. The connection is created with the EventsSourceElement property. This property defines which element is used as the source of mouse events that are used to control the camera. Because this element has a transparent background, the mouse events are triggered on the whole area of the border element (if the background property would not be defined, than the mouse events would be triggered only on areas where some content is shown). This means that when a user would be over the ViewportBorder element the mouse event would be used to control the camera. It is very easy to define what keyboard and mouse button combinations rotate and which move the camera – by default right mouse button is used to rotate the camera and ALT + right mouse button is used to move the camera – see the help file or samples that come with Ab3d.PowerToys for more info. If EventsSourceElement property would not be defined, the source of mouse events would be the Viewport3D that is connected to the camera. But because Viewport3D does not have the Background property, it would be only possible to rotate the camera when the mouse would be over shown 3D objects – clicking on the area around the objects would not trigger any mouse events.

The MouseCameraController also shows a special cursor icon when the camera is rotating or when the user can rotate the camera with left mouse button. If you would like to use different cursor, you can set the RotationCursor property to some other value.

With the CameraControlPanel it is possible to control the camera with clicking on the shown buttons. By default the CameraControlPanel shows buttons to rotate the camera and to change the distance of the camera. With adding ShowMoveButtons property and setting it to true, additional buttons to move the camera would be also shown.

2) Cameras

Now let me describe the cameras in Ab3d.PowerToys in more details.

In the XAML above we are using SceneCamera. This is just one of the cameras that come with Ab3d.PowerToys library. It is the most advanced and the most easy to use. The camera automatically measures the 3D scene (3D objects inside Viewport3D) and shows them from the specified angle (Heading="40" Attitude="-20" Bank="0") and distance (Distance="250"). Those four properties are common to all the cameras in Ab3d.PowerToys. They represent the main advantage over the WPF’s cameras because it is much easier to define the camera with angles than with 3D directional vectors. The following image (taken from Ab3d.PowerToys Samples) is showing how different angles are rotating the camera:

As sad before SceneCamera measures the objects in 3D scene and calculates the center position of the scene’s bounding box. The value that is specified with the Distance property is the distance of the camera from the center position of the scene.

Because measuring the scene also gives us the size of the shown 3D objects, it is also possible to use the IsDistancePercent property. If that property would be set to true then the Distance value would mean the percentage of the size of shown objects. For example if Distance would be set to 2, this would mean that the camera’s actual distance from the center of the scene would be 2 times the size of the object’s bounding box (length of diagonal). This makes the camera usage really simple because you do not need to worry about the size of the shown 3D objects. But note that if you change the content of the Viewport3D you need to call Refresh method on the SceneCamera so the scene is measured again. You can also set the IsDynamicTarget property to true and the camera will check the size and center position of the scene on every rendering event (on more complex scenes this can take some time, so it is recommended to manually call Refresh method).

If you check the above XAML more carefully you will see that the camera also sets the ShowCameraLight property to Always. This is another great feature of the cameras and simplifies defining the lights. It adds a DirectionalLight to Viewport3D that is illuminating the scene in the same direction as the camera is facing. This is almost the same as a light would be mounted to a real camera because when the camera rotates the light direction will be also changed accordingly. The value “Always” means that the DirectionalLight is always added. We could also set the value of ShowCameraLight to “Auto” – this would mean that the camera would check the scene and if it would not find any light, it would add the DirectionalLight. This is also the default value of the ShowCameraLight property. But if you know that you will define your own lights and want to skip the check for the lights, you can set the ShowCameraLight to “Never”.

SceneCamera is just one of many cameras in Ab3d.PowerToys library. The following is a list of the most useful camera types:

• SceneCamera
• ThirdPersonCamera
• TargetPositionCamera
• FirstPersonCamea

ThirdPersonCamera is very similar to SceneCamera. But instead of looking at the whole scene it only looks at a specified object (set to CenterObject property). The angles define from which direction the camera looks at the object. The distance in that case defines the distance from the object’s center position. With ThirdPersonCamera it is also possible to use IsDistancePercent property.

TargetPositionCamera is similar to SceneCamera and ThirdPersonCamera but does not have any automatic measurement. Instead there you have full control of the position where the camera is looking at (set with TargetPosition property). If you know the position and size of your 3D objects you can use that camera instead of SceneCamera. TragetPositionCamera is also used when you want full control of the position where the camera is looking at. This camera does not have IsDistancePercent property.

FirstPersonCamera is a camera that does not look at the scene, target position or specified object as previous cameras. Instead it looks at the world from the specified position (set with Position property) – the position of the camera. The angles define the orientation of the camera. This camera does not have the Distance property.

The following pdf file shows samples of using the described cameras:

The following image shows the class diagram of the cameras (click on the image to see it in full resolution):

This was just a really brief description of the cameras. To learn more about them please see the help file and check the samples that come with the library.

3) 3D Objects

After so many words we still do not have anything to show. So it is really time to add some 3D objects.

Ab3d.PowerToys library comes with many 3D objects. The following are available in version 3.4:

• Axis
• Box
• CenteredLineText
• Circle
• ColoredAxis
• Cone
• Cylinder
• HeightMap
• HorizontalPlane
• LineArc
• Line
• LineWithText
• MultiLine
• MultiMaterialBox
• Plane
• PolyLine
• Pyramid
• Rectangle
• Sphere
• Text
• Tube
• VerticalPlane
• WireBox
• WireCross
• WireGrid

If you define 3D objects in XAML you have two possible choices: you can create 3D object that are derived from Visual3D or from UIElement3D. For example to define a 3D box you can create a BoxVisual3D or BoxUIElement3D. The later add some additional features like focus, mouse events, tool tip, etc. But if you do not need that features you can use Visual3D objects.

When defining 3D objects in code, you can still create instances of Visual3D or UIElement3D objects. But you can also get a more low level objects (GeometryModel3D) with Model3DFactory, Line3DFactory, WireframeFactory or Text3DFactory classes.

As seen from the list above, the library also supports 3D lines. Here and additional note is needed. Because 3D lines are not supported in WPF 3D, they are not rendered in hardware. Therefore 3D lines are created with triangles that are than send to WPF 3D to render them in hardware.

For example if we need to create a 10 pixels wide 3D line, we are need to calculate the positions that will form two triangles that are oriented in such a way that they are facing the camera. This means that when the camera is changed, we need to recalculate the positions of the triangles so they are still facing the new camera. When we are showing only a few lines this is not a problem. But if we are showing many lines, for example a wireframe from a model with 20.000 vertices, then line recalculation can bring the CPU down and make the application response very bad. There are some tricks that can be used to improve the performance of 3D lines. They are described in the “Lines Stress Test” sample that came with the library (see the comments in the source code of that sample). Here I would just like to notify you that 3D lines in WPF 3D are much slower than solid models and should be used in greater quantities with care. However smaller number of lines are surely not a problem.

Now let’s add some 3D objects.

Insert the following into the Viewport3D:

<visuals:BoxVisual3D CenterPosition="0 5 0" Size="20 10 40" Material="Blue"/>

This will add a blue box to the 3D scene. The box is added to the specified location, with specified size and material. But wait! The Material definition looks very simple. If you are familiar with standard WPF 3D programming than you are more familiar with the following Material definition:

<visuals:BoxVisual3D CenterPosition="0 5 0" Size="20 10 40">
    <visuals:BoxVisual3D.Material>
        <DiffuseMaterial>
            <DiffuseMaterial.Brush>
                <SolidColorBrush Color="Blue"/>
            </DiffuseMaterial.Brush>
        </DiffuseMaterial>
    </visuals:BoxVisual3D.Material>
</visuals:BoxVisual3D>

This is the standard WPF’s way to assign a Blue material. Luckily all the 3D objects in Ab3d.PowerToys library have custom MaterialTypeConverter that enables you to use only one simple word to define the material. The used MaterialTypeConverter is very powerful – with simple strings you can define many possible materials.

For example the same blue material could be specified with Material="#0000FF".

In similar fashion it is also possible to set an image file as a texture. To do that just set the Material to the image file name – for example Material="Images/MyTexture.png".

It is also possible to define a SpecularMaterial. Let’s add a 3D sphere to show you how:

<visuals:SphereVisual3D CenterPosition="30 10 0" Radius="10" Material="S:64;Silver"/>

This creates a MaterialGroup with two children: SpecularMaterial (SpeculaPower = 64, Brush = White) and DiffuseMaterial (Brush = Silver). The SpeculaPower is defined by “S:64;” text. This short material definition always set the SpecularMaterial’s Brush to White (the most common setting). The following string sets a texture image instead of Silver brush: Material="S:64;Images/MyTexture.png".

It is also possible to use EmissiveMaterial. The following will create a sphere that is always Yellow regarding of the lights:

<visuals:SphereVisual3D CenterPosition="30 10 0" Radius="10" Material="E:Yellow"/>

Emissive material is created with a MaterialGroup with black DiffuseMaterial and EmissiveMaterial with brush defined with used string.

The following XAML defines some other 3D objects:

<visuals:BoxVisual3D CenterPosition="0 5 0" Size="20 10 40" Material="Blue"/>

<visuals:SphereVisual3D CenterPosition="30 10 0" Radius="10" Material="s:64;Silver"/>

<visuals:SphereVisual3D CenterPosition="-40 20 40" Radius="3" Material="e:Yellow"/>

<visuals:WireCrossVisual3D Position="-40 20 10" LinesLength="15" 
                            LineColor="Red" LineThickness="3"/>

<visuals:LineVisual3D StartPosition="10 10 -20" EndPosition="20 20 -20"
                        LineColor="Blue" LineThickness="2" StartLineCap="ArrowAnchor" />
                
<visuals:LineWithTextVisual3D StartPosition="20 20 -20" EndPosition="60 20 -20" 
                                LineColor="Blue" LineThickness="2"
                                Text="3D TEXT"/>

<visuals:WireGridVisual3D x:Name="BottomWireGrid" LineColor="#777" LineThickness="1" 
                        WidthCellsCount="10" HeightCellsCount="10" Size="100 100" />

And here is a screenshot from Visual Studio with the 3D scene defined above:

All the defined 3D objects are seen in the preview window.

In the lower left corner are buttons for the CameraControlPanel. In the lower right corner there is an icon which represents the SceneCamera. This icon is visible only in design time and is there so you can easily select the camera in XAML with simply clicking on the icon (note: if you do not want to see the icon in design time you can set the IsDesignTimeInfoIconShown property to false).

Now you can try out one of the nicest features of the library – the preview of the changes. Everything you change in the XAML, the change will be immediately shown in the preview. This means that you can simple change the heading or attitude of the camera and you will see your objects from another direction. You can also change the position or size of the objects. This way it is very easy to compose your 3D scene. Note: sometimes it can happen that the scene and XAML are not in sync any more – in that case the best solution is to rebuild your project and the preview should be showing the correct image again.

If you run that sample now you will see the 3D objects and will be able to rotate the camera around the objects with left mouse button and move the camera with holding ALT key and left mouse button. You could also rotate the camera with CameraControlPanel buttons. Not bad for just a few lines of XAML.
As shows in the list before the Ab3d.PowerToys define many other 3D objects. The following pdf file shows many of them:

4) Showing objects from 3ds files

Usually you will want to show more complex 3D models that are defined in some 3D modeling application. This can be done with Ab3d.Reader3ds library.

The Ab3d.Reader3ds library contains classes that can read 3D objects with all of their properties, lights, cameras and animations from 3ds files. The 3ds file format is one of the most commonly used file format for storing 3D models. Therefore almost all 3D modeling applications support exporting into it.

The following schema shows the process of showing 3D objects in WPF application:

Here let me present just the simplest usage of the Ab3d.Reader3ds.

I will show you how to add 3D objects from 3ds file to your scene defined in XAML file. First you need to add reference to the Ab3d.Reader3ds library and add the following namespace declaration:

xmlns:visual3ds="clr-namespace:Ab3d.Visuals;assembly=Ab3d.Reader3ds"

Than you can use the following XAML to read 3D objects:

<visual3ds:Model3ds Source="Resources/MyObject.3ds" 
                    Position="0 0 0" PositionType="BottomCenter" />

<visual3ds:Model3ds Source="Resources/OtherObjects.3ds" ObjectName="Car01" 
    Position="100 0 0" PositionType="BottomCenter" SizeX="100"/>

The first line reads 3D models from MyObject.3ds file. The model is positioned so that its bottom center position is at (0, 0, 0) coordinates.

The second line reads the OtherObjects.3ds file. It does not show all the objects from that file (as in the first line) but only the object with the “Car01” name. The Car01 object is scaled so its x size is 100 and positioned so that its bottom center is at (100, 0, 0).

Note that when using more than one Model3D with the same 3ds file, the 3ds file is read only once.
Ab3d.Reader3ds also provides many other ways to read 3ds file. To see more please check the samples and help file that come with the library.

5) Conclusion

There are still many features that were not described in this blog post. For example in Ab3d.PowerToys library there is an EventManager3D class that simplifies using mouse events on 3D objects – you can use MouseClick, MouseOver, MouseDrag and other mouse events on specific 3D objects. The library also solves problem with semi-transparent 3D objects with TransparencySorter.

I hope I have persuaded you that the Ab3d.PowerToys and Ab3d.Reader3ds libraries are really easy to use and provide many features to create great WPF 3D applications.

To read more about other advantaged of using WPF 3D and our libraries you are also invited to read the 3D Overview page.

This release brings the following:

-    improved installation on 64 bit Windows
-    added .Net 4 assemblies
-    improved Ab3d.PowerToys, Ab3d.Reader3ds and ZoomPanel libraries

The new installer has been improved to work better on 64 bit windows. Now the products are no longer installed under “Program Files (x86)” folder, but under “Program Files”. All the products are built with “Any CPU” setting and therefore do not need to be in the folder where all the “old stuff” is. Note that if you were referencing our products from the x86 folder, you will need to update the path to our products.

All the products now also contain assemblies that are built on .Net 4.0 Client Profile framework. When building .Net 4.0 applications, you can now reference native .Net 4 assemblies. Before you had to reference original .Net 3.0 (Ab3d.Reader3ds, Ab2d.ReaderSvg, Ab2d.ReaderWmf or ZoomPanel) or .Net 3.5 SP1 (Ab3d.PowerToys) assemblies. This was not a problem because the 4.0 CLR runs the assemblies on previous target frameworks natively inside 4.0 CLR (without running them in some kind of virtual machine). So it was already possible to use our libraries on machines where only .Net 4.0 is installed. Anyway time goes on and now almost all new applications are built on 4.0 so I decided to prepare native builds for that framework. Of course the original 3.0 and 3.5 assemblies are still available. Original assemblies are inside bin folder as before. The new assemblies can be found inside bin\.Net 4 folder.

Because all our products except Ab2d.ReaderWmf are using AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers assembly attribute, I had to take a closer look at the security critical sections of the code and add some security related attributes on some methods. This made the code .Net 4.0 compliant.

Note that the Viewer3ds, ViewerSvg and Paste2Xaml applications were not ported to .Net 4.0 and still requires older framework to run (older applications cannot run inside 4.0 CLR - only assemblies can be used inside 4.0 applications).

As mentioned before some of the products were also improved.

ZoomPanel library got improved ZoomPanelMiniMap control. Here controlling ZoomPanel with moving rectangle around was improved (before movements were slow). In the previous version it could happen that when a content of ZoomPanel was changed from a big to a much smaller content, than the new image in ZoomPanelMiniMap was too small. This is fixed now.

Ab3d.Reader3ds library also got a few improvements. Most of the work there was done to improve reading of broken 3ds files. Because 3ds file is very old and very commonly used, there are many applications out there that can export to that file format. Unfortunately not all of them create valid 3ds files. I got some of such files. Most of them were so screwed that it was not possible to import them into 3D Studio Max (invalid file format error was shown). Despite that there were still some valid data inside those files. And the new version tries to read as much from them as possible.

In case when a broken 3ds file is read with Reader3ds, you will still get FileFormatException (when reading with default settings). But now you can catch the exception. Than you can warn the user about problematic file and if the user wants to read the file anyway, you can set the new TryToReadBrokenFiles property on Reader3ds to true and read the file again. You can also have that property always true and just check the IsBroken property after reading 3ds file. Both those options are also used in the new version of Viewer3ds.

One nice new feature of Viewer3ds is showing object’s bounding box, triangles and normal. This is very useful in finding the cause of the problems in some 3D objects that do not look correct. Because Viewer3ds uses powerful 3D lines capabilities of Ab3d.PowerToys library this was an easy task to do. The following screenshot shows that new feature:

The longest list of new features for this release belongs to Ab3d.PowerToys library. Today I will just write short descriptions of new features. In one of the following posts I will discuss some of them in more details. So the improvements are:
-    Improved LinesUpdater performance and removed possible memory leaks.
-    Added Reset method to LinesUpdater that takes Viewport3D as parameter to reset (remove all lines) only from specific Viewport3D.
-    Added HeightMapVisual3D and HeightMapMesh3D (with two very nice samples)
-    Added TubeMesh3D, TubeVisual3D and TubeUIElement3D.
-    Added support to very easily create 3D curves: added Ab3d.Utilities.BezierCurve and Ab3d.Utilities.BSpline classes; also added CreateBSpline3D and CreateNURBSCurve3D to Line3DFactory.
-    Added MouseWheel event to EventManager3D – now you can subscribe to MouseWheel event on any Model3D object.

Ab3d.ReaderSvg and Ab2d.ReaderWmf libraries did not get any new features of fixes. But they also got new versions (with same major and minor version but increased build version) because of new .Net 4.0 assemblies and small changes that were needed in the code to make the code 4.0 compliant.

I am happy to announce that maintenance releases are now available for the following products:

• Ab3d.Reader3ds and Viewer3ds
• Ab3d.PowerToys
• Ab2d.ReaderSvg and ViewerSvg
• Ab2d.ReaderWmf and Paste2Xaml
• ZoomPanel (evaluation version only)

Everybody that are using evaluation version will be happy to know that new evaluation versions of all the products now show the evaluation information dialog only once per day. Previous versions show evaluation information dialogs on each start of your application. If two or more controls were used (for example ReaderSvg and ZooomPanel) than each time you started your application two dialogs were shown. This was too annoying and is now lessened so the dialogs are shown only once per day.

Another important change in evaluation version allows you to reinstall evaluation version (the same version or newer) after 90 days from the date of installing previous evaluation version. The 60-day evaluation time limit is still the same. But with previous versions you need to contact support to extend the evaluation version after 60 days. This was not very practical when you tried an older version before some time and at that time you did not need the library or it did not have all the features you wanted. But after some time you decided to try with the new version and you were not able to install the evaluation because it has already expired. Now this is not the case any more because after 90 days you can reinstall the evaluation version again. Note that when reinstalling the same version it is recommended to uninstall it before installing it again. There is still 30 days between evaluation expiration and possibility to reinstall after 90 days - this is left to prevent continuous use of only evaluation version. But if you need to extend the 60-day period you can still contact support to extend your evaluation.

Of course there are also some other improvements and new features that apply for both evaluation and commercial version.

Let me start with Ab2d.ReaderSvg (and ViewerSvg). The changes in new version are:

• Improved reading size of root svg object (improved support for viewBox and added support for preserveAspectRatio).
• The GetXaml method now preserves the width and height in specified units (cm or inch).
• Removed memory leak that occurred sometimes when reading embedded images.
• Improved reading embedded images - they are now read faster and with lower memory usage.
• Fixed problems when Path bounds were negative and IsSizeSetToPathElement in SilverlightXamlWriterSettings was set to true.
• Prevented adding PresentationOptions:Freeze="True" text to XAML for Silverlight.
• Added option to export for Silverlight 5.
• Fixed reading svg file that contain links to images and were read without specifying the whole path (Read method was called only with svg file name without the full path).

Ab2d.ReaderWmf got the following changes:

• Fixed leaking GDI+ handles under some circumstances. This could lead to "Cannot open wmf file!" exception after opening a few thousands metafiles.
• The Read and ReadGeometry methods that take stream as parameter now read the metafiles directly from the stream and do not create a temp file from stream as before.

Changes for Ab3d.Reader3ds:

• Improved reading textures in Model3ds and Viewport3ds. Added TexturesPath property to both controls - it can be used to specify custom textures path. If TexturesPath is not specified, the path of the 3ds file is used.
• Added support for cameras that are children of helper objects (for example when camera is linked to a helper object so the camera is transformed as the helper object).
• Fixed setting IsCameraAnimated property - Reader3ds sets this property to true if the 3ds file contains camera animations. Before the property could be set to true in cases when the camera was not animated.
• Added ReadLightRange property to Reader3ds. Before the Range of PointLights and SpotLights was not read. Now it is possible to read the Range with setting ReadLightRange to true. Note that attenuation data are not present in the 3ds file - if they are used they need to be manually set to lights after the 3ds file is read.

It is also worth noting that with new version of Viewer3ds all the cameras defined in 3ds file are exported as comments in xaml. The xaml also get a description of the exported cameras. This makes switching between cameras defined in 3ds file very easy.

There are also a few improvements for Ab3d.PowerToys:

• Fixed rotating with MouseCameraController and CameaControlPanel when the scene in vertically inverted when Attitude is between 90 and 270 degrees.
• Fixed EventManager3D where under some circumstances a new object drag can be automatically stared just after end drag event.
• Improved MaterialTypeConverter: Added support for simply defining SpecularMaterial and EmissiveMaterials. For example the "s:32;Blue" text can be used to define MaterialGroup with DiffuseMaterial and SpecularMaterial (SpecularPower = 32; SpecularBrush = White; DiffuseMaterial = Blue). The "e:Yellow" can be used to show yellow emissive material. Also improved support for defining textures path (now files from local disk and from http can be used).
• Fixed occasional NullReferenceException in SphericalCamera when layout is updated in Visual Studio designer.

The commercial version of ZoomPanel was not updated.

I would like to conclude the blog post with something completley different - a new logo for the company AB4D d.o.o.

I got the new logo from a design contest that run on 99designs.com. I was really satisfied with the contest and would really recommend that page to everyone. We are also making a redesign of the web page that will be available soon.

We are also preparing a very interesting new product (but more on that later).

I surely believe that the future is very bright for the company. I hope that our products will also make it brighter for you.

I am really happy to announce that a new major release of Ab3d.Reader3ds and Ab3d.PowerToys libraries has been released.

The key features of this release are:

• Added transparency sorting that prevents problems with transparent 3D objects in WPF.
• Improved reading of some 3ds files.
• Simplified animating camera rotations.
• Added support for OrthographicCamera.
• Improved commercial licensing code.

Before describing some of the key features in more details let me first give you the full list of changes.

Ab3d.Reader3ds v8.0:

• Added support for simple transparency sorting that can prevent most of the problems with transparent objects. If the new IsTransparencySortingEnabled property is true (by default) the transparent objects are moved after non-transparent objects. For complex models with many transparent objects use of advanced transparency sorting in Ab3d.PowerToys is needed. Also added TransparentObjectsCount property to Reader3ds (so user can decide if he need to enable transparency sorting or not - with Ab3d.PowerToys).
• Added NameFormatString to BaseXamlWriterSettings - it can be used to customize how the object names are written to XAML (custom prefixes and suffixes can be added to names).
• Added possibility to read tga into BitmapImage with static Read method in a new Ab3d.Common.TgaReader class. Note: The previous versions of Reader3ds already supported reading tga files. But it was not possible to read tga files in your applications. This is now possible and enabled you to convert tga images to common files (for example png) that can be used with xaml created from 3ds file). This feature is available only in pro version.
• Fixed reading some of the objects with object matrix that has negative determinant.
• Fixed using ForceTwoSidedMaterials property for models that does not have material defined and where the default material is used.
• Fixed objects without material set (default material is used) and with object matrix that has negative determinant.
• Fixed when object with negative determinant is broken into sub objects for different materials - the parent's negative determinant was not used before.
• Fixed reading 3ds file where definition of two sided material is written outside material chunk.
• Fixed reading some partially broken 3ds file (objects with invalid triangle indices are not shaded).
• Skipped importing 3D objects that does not have triangle indices set (have only positions set).
• Fixed security exception in partially trusted WPF Browser applications - before the multi-treading code was not able to get the number of processors on the system.
• Improved commercial licensing code to prevent delay caused in RSACryptoServiceProvider under some circumstances.
• Added Ab3d.Licensing.PowerToys.EmbeddedLicenseAssembly property to speed-up looking for embedded license key in commercial version.

Ab3d.PowerToys v3.0:

• Added support for transparency sorting with new TransparencySorter and TransparencyHelper classes.
• Simplified animating camera rotation with new StartRotation, StopRotation methods on SphericalCamera. There is also a new IsRotating properties. The MouseCameraController is also adjusted to suspend animated rotation while user rotates the camera with the mouse.
• Added axes names to CameraAxisPanel. Also added IsAxisNameShown, XAxisColor, YAxisColor and ZAxisColor properties to CameraAxisPanel.
• Added support for OrthographicCamera for all Ab3d.PowerToys Cameras. Added CameraType and CameraWidth properties to BaseCamera.
• Greatly improved creating wireframe from existing 3D models - now it is much faster and uses much less memory.
• Improved LinesUpdater - the lines that are removed from the visual tree are now free to be cleaned by garbage collection.
• Added Reset and UnregisterLine methods to LinesUpdater to manually remove lines from LinesUpdater. This enables better manual control of the registered lines.
• Improved measuring scene bounds in SceneCamera when transformations are used on Visual3D objects. Before the used transformations prevented the camera to correctly show the scene.
• Fixed selecting cameras with mouse click on camera icon in Visual Studio 2010 designer.
• Added GetCameraMatrixes to BaseCamera to get view and projection Matrix3D of the current camera.
• Improved Ab3d.Utilities.Dumper class - Added GetTransformText and GetMatrix3DText methods and made GetMaterialText public. Also the GetModelInfoString method now also displays the Transformation details.
• Improved commercial licensing code to prevent delay caused in RSACryptoServiceProvider under some circumstances.
• Added Ab3d.Licensing.PowerToys.EmbeddedLicenseAssembly property to speed-up looking for embedded license key in commercial version.

TRANSPARENCY SORTING

WPF 3D can show transparent 3D objects. But to show them correctly, the transparent objects need to be defined after all the objects that are visible through them.

The following image shows the transparency problem in a simple 3D scene. Because the red boxes are defined after the semi-transparent GlassPlane they are not visible through the GlassPlane (the order of objects is visible in the right):

To solve the problem, the GlassPlane needs to be moved after the non-transparent objects. The following image is showing the correctly rendered scene.

For cases when the number of transparent objects is not big and if the transparent objects are not positioned in 3D space one after another, the simple transparency sorting is usually enough to produce correct rendering in WPF 3D.

But simply moving transparent objects after non-transparent objects is not always enough. For example if transparent object A is visible through transparent object B, than B must be defined after A. The problem in this case occurs when the camera is rotated so that B is visible through A. Now B must be defined before A. To solve this problem correctly, firstly the transparent objects must be moved after non-transparent objects and than transparent objects must be sorted by their distance to the camera. The sorting must be done after the camera is changed.

As seen from the new features lists above, both Ab3d.Reader3ds and Ab3d.PowerToys now support transparency sorting.

Ab3d.Reader3ds can perform a simple transparency sorting by moving transparent objects after non-transparent objects. Transparency sorting is performed if the IsTransparencySortingEnabled is set to true (by default). It is also possible to get the number of transparent objects by the TransparentObjectsCount property. Ab3d.Reader3ds does not do any sorting by camera distance. For this the Ab3d.PowerToys library is needed.

With Ab3d.PowerToys library it is possible to perform simple transparency sorting and sorting by camera distance. TransparencySorter class can be used to perform simple transparency sorting or ByCameraDistance transparency sorting where the transparent objects are sorted by their distance to the camera.

Simple transparency sorting (moving transparent objects after non-transparent objects) can be done with the following line:

Ab3d.Utilities.TransparencySorter.SimpleSort(myModelsGroup);

When sorting by camera distance is used, the TransparencySorter can also automatically re-sort the objects when the camera is changed. To optimize the sorting it is possible to specify an angle that will tell how much the camera's direction must be changed when a new sort is preformed.

To perform transparency sorting by camera distance the following lines of code can be used:

private TransparencySorter _transparencySorter;
 
private void StartTransparencySorting()
{
    _transparencySorter = new TransparencySorter(_rootModel3DGroup, Camera1);
     
    // Re-sort on every 10 degrees change
    _transparencySorter.CameraAngleChange = 10; 
 
    // Do an initial sorting
    _transparencySorter.Sort();
 
    _transparencySorter.StartSortingOnCameraChanged();
}
 
private void StopTransparencySorting()
{
    if (_transparencySorter != null)
        _transparencySorter.StopSortingOnCameraChanged();
}

For more code samples see the samples that come with Ab3d.PowerToys library.

The following images show rendering of the objects before (left image) and after (right image) transparency sorting:

IMPROVED READING OF 3DS FILES IN AB3D.READER3DS

Ab3d.Reader3ds went through a big test with our bigger customer. Many real world 3ds files were used to test the accuracy of the reader. Because many test files were not created with 3D Studio Max or similar product, many of them were not correctly formatted (it was not possible to open them with 3D Studio Max). After some changes in Ab3d.Reader3ds mst of those "broken" 3ds file can now be read correctly. This made the library even better and proved its status as the best library for importing 3ds files.

IMPROVED COMMERCIAL LICENSING CODE

The last relase of Ab2d.ReaderSvg, Ab2d.ReaderWmf and ZoomPanel library already got improved commercial licensing code. The change fixed a potential issue with using RSACryptoServiceProvider that can lead to very long delays when checking the license key. This issue has been now fixed for Ab3d.Reader3ds and Ab3d.PowerToys. Because of this issue it is highly recommended to upgrade to the new version.

Additionally as with the 2D libraries it is now possible to set the EmbeddedLicenseAssembly property to speed up finding the embedded license key in the application.

To see more details about this change please see the blog post for the 2D libraries or check the new help files.

OTHER IMPORTANT AB3D.POWERTOYS IMPROVEMENTS

A very useful new features of the Ab3d.PowerToys library simplifies creating animated camera rotations. Before animated camera rotations were created with binding a DoubleAnimation to Heading property of the camera. But using DoubleAnimation has its drawback because it the animation locks the value of the Heading and therefore makes rotating the camera with the mouse impossible.

The new version now include the StartRotation and StopRotation methods that can be used to simply start the camera animation. The StartRotation method takes two parameters: the first is heading change per second, the second is attitude change per second. The best thing about this is that while the camera is animated with StartRotation method, user can still use the mouse to rotate the camera (during mouse rotation the animation is suspended). This way it is very easy to create great presentations of 3D models where the model is rotated and the used can still manually change the rotation with the mouse.

One of the very requested feature was also a support for OrthographicCamera. It is mostly used in technical applications where the ratios and parallel lines of the 3D objects need to be preserved. The OrthographicCamera is now also supported.

A very nice new feature is also that axis names are shown on the CameraAxisPanel (it shows the orientation of axis of the current scene).

A lot of work was also done to improve 3D lines. Now wireframes from existing 3D objects are created much faster and also use much less memory. Also the memory management of the 3D lines is greatly improved and enables user to have more control of the registered 3D lines.

With new features the development of applications with 3D content has become even easier.

WPF 3D is very capable of displaying 3D content for most needs of business applications. It also has many advantages over other platforms (DirectX, XNA). With WPF 3D, Ab3d.PowerToys and Ab3d.Reader3ds programming with 3D was never easier.

I would like to conclude with saying that in my opinion desktop applications will not just sink into oblivion. They will still have their big share with complex business applications that need to be very user friendly, need advanced user interfaces to simplify complex user processes or require lots of resources. Despite many (usually not developers but marketing driven) considerations, I believe that WPF is still the very best technology for writing such applications.

A new version of Ab3d.PowerToys was just published.

The work on a new version was started as a response to the user post on the forum that asked how it would be possible to control a 3D camera from Ab3d.PowerToys library with his fingers on a multi-touch tablet pc. This looked as a simple an interested task but ended with discovering a probable bug in .Net 4.0 and creating a workaround for it. Also a discovered problems with WPF Browser applications were also fixed.

The following is a short list of new things in this release:

• Added multi-touch camera controller sample (for .Net 4.0).
• Fixed using MaterialTypeConverter in .Net 4.0 applications (for example using the following in XAML: Materila="Blue").
• Fixed problems in WPF Browser applications (fixed showing licensing windows in partially trusted environment).
• Added Ab3d.PowerToys WPF Browser applications sample.

The following screenshot shows the working multi-touch camera sample.

Because the support for multi-touch devices is available in .Net Framework 4.0 I did not want to put the new code into the library as it would raise the requirements from .Net 3.5 to .Net 4.0. So I have decided to create a sample .Net 4.0. project that would reference Ab3d.PowerToys library and use the multi-touch capabilities of the framework to adjust the camera.

Cameras and camera controllers in Ab3d.PoweToys library are very extendable, so it was really easy to create a multi-touch camera controller.

The following code shows the event handler that handles the touch data:

void ViewportBorder_ManipulationDelta(object sender, ManipulationDeltaEventArgs e)
{
    ManipulationDelta delta = e.DeltaManipulation;

    if (delta.Scale.X != 1 || delta.Scale.Y != 1)
    {
        // Scale with adjusting camera distance
        Camera1.Distance *= 1 / ((delta.Scale.X + delta.Scale.Y) / 2);
                
        e.Handled = true;
    }

    if (delta.Translation.X != 0 || delta.Translation.Y != 0)
    {
        // Rotate and move with calling RotateCamera or MoveCamera methods on MouseCameraController1.
        // Both methods take mouse dx and dy as parameters.
        // The amount of rotation is controller by EventsSourceElementRotationChange property on MouseCameraController1: Gets or sets the double value that specifies for how many degrees the camera is rotates when the mouse moves from one side of the EventsSourceElement to another size. The default value is 270.
        // The amount of movement is calculated by MouseCameraController1 that tries to make the movements in 3D just as big to follow the mouse / hand movements
        if (RotateRadioButton.IsChecked ?? false)
            MouseCameraController1.RotateCamera(-delta.Translation.X, -delta.Translation.Y);
        else
            MouseCameraController1.MoveCamera(-delta.Translation.X, -delta.Translation.Y);

        e.Handled = true;
    }
}

As the code shows the pinch zooming is represented as Scale in the DeltaManipulation. The scale is simply used to adjust the camera's distance.

Handling of the translation depends on the state of the RadioButtons that specify if we are rotating or moving the camera. In case of rotating, the RotateCamera method on camera controller is called. It takes the mouse difference as input parameter. In case a camera movement mode is selected, MoveCamera method is called - again it accepts mouse changes.

When I wanted to test the fist version of the code that would rotate a simple box, I got a runtime error that the value "#247589" cannot be assigned to Material. The error pointed to the following line of xaml:

<visuals:BoxVisual3D CenterPosition="0 20 0" Size="40 40 40" Material="#247589"/>

The xaml was copied from other samples for Ab3d.PowerToys library. When the project with other samples was started, there was no runtime exception. But in the new multi-touch sample the same line suddenly produces an exception. This is very strange.

The line defines a 3D box with specified center position, its size and material color. The material color is set by a help of the MaterialTypeConverter that comes with Ab3d.PowerToys library and enables setting the material by simply writing the name of the color (Blue), its hex number (#247589) or specifying image file name that should be used as texture. Without the MaterialTypeConverter the previous line should be written:

<visuals:BoxVisual3D CenterPosition="0 20 0" Size="40 40 40">
    <visuals:BoxVisual3D.Material>
        <DiffuseMaterial>
            <DiffuseMaterial.Brush>
                <SolidColorBrush Color="#247589"/>
            </DiffuseMaterial.Brush>
        </DiffuseMaterial>
    </visuals:BoxVisual3D.Material>
</visuals:BoxVisual3D>

I have removed the Material="#247589" and use the standard WPF was to set the material (as written above). This time the sample worked without errors.

The difference between the working and not working project was the target framework version. The not working was using 4.0.

It looked like that the baml parser (parser that reads the compiled xaml) in .Net 4.0 works does not want to use the custom type converter (MaterialTypeConverter). It was time to search the web. There were many problems with custom type converters, but none was similar to mine. The web did not have a clue about my problems. To make things easier, I created two new project were I wanted to reproduce the problem with as less code as possible. The first attemp showed that type converters on properties and dependancy properties work correctly in .Net 4.0. After some additional checking I have discovered that the Material property in Ab3d.PowerToys library was not created from stretch with Register method, but was created with AddOwner method - I wanted to reuse the already defined property on my own class. That was a breakthrough. When I changed the Register method with the AddOwner on a simplified project, the same error occurred.

After that discovery the workaround was simple - define the Material property from stretch.

This showed a case where assemblies that are created for .Net 3.5 does not work the same when they run with .Net 4.0. I think this should not happen. I am going to report this as a bug to Microsoft Connect.

So a rather simple task lead to interesting discoveries.

The multi-touch sample is available with the new version of Ab3d.PowerToys library. If you already have the library and do not want to upgrade to latest version just to see the sample, you can also download just the sample from the following link: Ab3d.PowerToys.Multitouch.zip (remember to uncomment the old style 3d box definition in xaml).

EDIT:

From Ab3d.PowerToys version 5.2 on, the multi-touch support is already build into the core Ab3d.PowerToys library into its .Net 4.0 version. This means that you do not need to use special MultiTouchMouseCameraController class for that. All you need to do is to make sure that you are referencing the .Net 4 version of the library from the ".NET 4" subfolder (the .Net 3.5 version does not support multi-touch).