Petzold - 3D Programming for Windows: Three-Dimensional Graphics Programming for the Windows Presentation Foundation

Copyright 2010 Charles Petzold (All)

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WPF 3D is not intended for graphics-intensive point-of-view games; nor is it suitable for producing the next big-screen epic featuring three-dimensional rodents or ogres. Programmers who want to pursue those types of applications might be happier looking at Microsoft DirectX rather than WPF 3D.

WPF 3D is instead intended to give programmers the ability to integrate 3D into their client Windows applications. This use of enhanced graphics might be as subtle as fashioning a control that has a 3D appearance, or using 3D to display complex information, or mimicking real-world objects (such as books). The last chapter of this book has some examples of WPF applications incorporating 3D that I hope will inspire you.

Although WPF 3D is not intended for complex games or movies, it is definitely built for animation. WPF includes an extensive animation API and you can use that API with your 3D graphics. In this book I begin demonstrating animation in and I never let up. Somewhat related to animation is data binding. You can move or transform 3D figures by binding them to controls such as scrollbarsanother of my favorite activities in this book.

Although WPF 3D runs on both Windows Vista and Windows XP with .NET 3.0 installed, you don't get exactly the same features. Even on Windows Vista, the quality of 3D graphics is dependent on the video board you have installed in the computer. A video board with a better on-board graphics processing unit (GPU) can accomplish some feats that are too slow to be done entirely in software. WPF graphics capabilities are categorized by "tiers" that are described on this Web page:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms742196.aspx

In particular, only with a Tier 2 video board installed under Windows Vista do you get anti-aliasing in 3D. (Anti-aliasing is the use of shades of color to minimize the stark "staircase" effect caused by using discrete pixels to represent continuous lines or surfaces.) In the grand scheme of things, anti-aliasing might not sound like an important feature, but it makes a big difference when 3D graphics are animated.

You might want to get a new video board for your forays into 3D graphics, but if you're writing applications for other users, you might also want to be aware of the limitations that some of your users may experience when they run your programs.

In writing this book, I have assumed that you already have experience programming for the Windows Presentation Foundation using the C# programming language and the Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) that was introduced as part of .NET 3.0.

If you're a beginning programmer, I recommend that you learn C# first by writing console programs, which are character-mode programs that run in the Command Prompt window. My book Programming in the Key of C#: A Primer for Aspiring Programmers (Microsoft Press, 2003) takes this approach.

If you're a programmer who has a previous background in C or C++ but has not yet learned about programming for the .NET Framework with C#, you might want to begin with my short book .NET Book Zero: What the C or C++ Programmer Needs to Know About C# and the .NET Framework. The book is free and is available for reading or downloading from the following page of my Web site:

http://www.charlespetzold.com/dotnet

If you're familiar with earlier manifestations of .NET but haven't yet tackled .NET 3.0, WPF, and XAML, my book Applications = Code + Markup: A Guide to the Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (Microsoft Press, 2006) is a comprehensive tutorial. Several aspects of WPF programming are more crucial for 3D than others. These are:

If you are an experienced WPF programmer but you prefer to code in Microsoft Visual Basic .NET or another .NET-compliant language, I can only tell you that many of the programming examples in this book are in XAML rather than C#. Learning at least to read C# code and mentally translate it into your preferred language has become a vital skill in .NET programming.

Three-dimensional graphics programming necessarily involves mathematics, but I've tried to presume a minimum of background knowledge. For example, I've provided refreshers on vectors, matrix algebra, and imaginary numbers, but I've assumed that you have no previous knowledge of quaternions.

However, I do want you to come to this book with a basic facility with trigonometry. I don't need you to reel off lists of common trigonometric identities, but you should have a good working knowledge of angles, radians, sines, cosines, and tangents. If you know without thinking too hard that there are radians in 180 degrees, that the sine of 90 degrees equals 1, that the cosine of zero degrees also equals 1, and that the tangent of 45 degrees equals 1 as well, you should be in good shape.

Some of the WPF 3D classes are specifically intended to insulate you from heavier mathematics going on under the covers. Consequently, I cover those classes early in the book. Not until relatively late in the book do I get into the more mathematics-laden topics of matrix transforms and quaternions. Depending on your ambitions and aspirations regarding 3D graphics programming, you might find these chapters challenging or altogether too scary. Books are great for conflicts like that because: