Ab3d.PowerToys for WPF

Ab3d.PowerToys is the ultimate helper library for work with WPF 3D.

The main features of the library are:

• Cameras (SceneCamera, FirstPersonCamera, ThirdPersonCamera, etc.)
• Camera Controllers (MouseCameraController, CameraControlPanel)
• 3D Models and Visuals (Sphere, Box, Cylinder, etc.)
• 3D Lines
• 3D Text
• Event Manager 3D (simplified event handling on 3D objects)
• Complete solution for WPF 3D transparency problem
• Many helper classes to ease work with WPF 3D

Cameras, 3D Models, Lines and Text can be defined in XAML. The results are immediately shown in Visual Studio Designer so the whole 3D scene can be designed in Visual Studio almost as in a 3D modeling application.

With Ab3d.PowerToys programming with 3D cannot be easier!

The library defines a few new Cameras that can be used instead of the current WPF's cameras. The main difference between Ab3d Cameras and WPF cameras is that Ab3d Cameras does not use Vectors to define the LookDirection, but instead use angles in degrees to define it. This is much more natural. For example if you want to look at the scene a little bit from the right and from above, you just define the Heading to be 30 and Attitude to be -45. You can also define the Distance from the scene. The most important Ab3d Cameras are: SceneCamera, FirstPersonCamera and ThirdPersonCamera. A good overview of the new cameras can be seen in the Cameras cheat sheet document that can be opened from a link below.

Camera Controllers are used to control the camera. The MouseCameraController can be used to rotate and move the camera with the mouse. The rotation and movement can be configured to any combination of mouse buttons and keyboard modifiers (shift, control and alt). For example the following XAML sets the MouseCameraController to rotate the camera with left mouse button and to move the camera with left mouse button and alt key pressed:

<ab3dControls:MouseCameraController 
                 RotateCameraConditions="LeftMouseButtonPressed"
                 MoveCameraConditions="LeftMouseButtonPressed, AltKey"/>

The CameraControlPanel shows nice buttons to rotate and move the camera and also move the camera closer or farther away. There are also a CameraPreviewPanel and CameraAxisPanel that graphically show the current orientation of the camera.

The Ab3d.PowerToys library also contains classes to create basic 3D models in code or XAML. It is possible to create Plane, Circle, Box, Pyramid, Sphere, Cone and Cylinder 3D models.

To make the 3D objects definitions cleaner a ModelTypeConverter is used for all Material properties used by 3D objects. This way it is possible to set the material with a color name or code (#FFFFAAAA) or image uri.

There is also support for 3D Lines with optimized update mechanism that makes the 3D lines implementation the most advanced and with the best performance for WPF.

The library also supports 3D Text that can be defined anywhere in 3D space. The text is drawn as a series of connected 3D lines that are created from internal font definition.

The EventManager3D class is a helper class that enables user to simply subscribe to mouse events on 3D objects. The following mouse events are supported: MouseEnter, MouseLeave, MouseDown, MouseUp, MouseClick, BeginMouseDrag, MouseDrag, EndMouseDrag and MouseDoubleClick. This way you do not need to do the complicated 3D hit testing any more. The EventManager3D is also better than WPF's ModelUIElement3D because it supports more mouse events (including mouse drag in 3D), provides better event data and preserves the structure of the 3D models. This way your code is much simpler and better organized.

WPF 3D can show transparent 3D objects. But to show them correctly, the transparent objects need to be correctly sorted. Without this some of the objects are not visible through the transparent objects. Ab3d.PowerToys provide complete solution to this problem. More about that can be read in Transparency Sorting page.

Important:

The Ab3d.PowerToys library is available as a stand alone product.
It is also available only for 1 USD with Ab3d.Reader3ds Pro license. This way you get a complete set of tools for WPF 3D.

3D Objects		Cameras

[xaml]	[xaml]	[xaml]
[xaml]	[xaml]

Version 3.0

• 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.

Version 2.1

• Fixed licensing code for WPF Browser applications (partially trusted) - before licensing did not work when both Ab3d.Reader3ds and Ab3d.PowerToys were used (defined in license.licx file).

Version 2.0

• Added Offset to all cameras to move the camera around.
• Added support for moving camera with MouseCameraController and CameraControlPanel.
• Added RotateCameraConditions and MoveCameraConditions properties to MouseCameraController to fine tune the conditions to rotate and move the camera.
• Added 3D Text support with TextVisual3D, CenteredTextVisual3D and LineWithTextVisual3D.
• Added MultiMaterialBox where each side of the box can have its own material.
• Added CreateFrom method to all Ab3d.Cameras - it can be used to create any Ab3d.Camera from existing WPF's Camera (or camera read from 3ds file with Ab3d.Reader3ds).
• Added CameraAxisPanel - a predefined panel that shows the axis orientation for the target camera.
• Added RectangleVisual3D, WireBoxVisual3, WireCrossVisual3D, VerticalPlaneVisual3D and LineArcVisual3D.
• Added IsVisible to all 3d models derived from Visual3D. Now all Visual3D are derived from BaseVisual3D.
• Added CreateWireframe method that takes Model3D to create wireframe from Model3DGroup or GeometryModel3D.
• Added IsClosed property to WireGridVisual3D - if true a rectangle is drawn around wire grid to close the grid.
• Added possibility to set 3D line thickness to 0 to hide the line - the same as set IsVisible to false.
• Added Refresh method to all UIElemet3D classes - this way it is possible to force creation of used Model3D also if the UIElemet3D is not added to Viewport3D.
• Added EventsSourceElementName to MouseCameraController - now it is possible to specify the custom event source also by specifying the element name.
• Added GetModelInfoString method to Ab3d.Utilities.Dumper class - it gets a string with details about the GeometryModel3D or Model3DGroup.
• Added IsDesignTimeInfoIconShown property to Ab3d.Cameras to hide camera info icon in design time - useful for custom controls that use Ab3d.Cameras.
• Added Ab3d.Utilities.CameraUtils with CalculateCameraAngles to get camera angles (heading, attitude, bank) from lookDirection and upDirection.
• Added Ab3d.Utilities.MathUtils.Rotete method to rotate Vector3D or Point3D for heading and attitude.
• Added Ab3d.Utilities.MathUtils with IsOne, IsZero and IsSame methods that take double precision errors into account.
• Added Refresh method to all UIElemet3D classes - this way it is possible to force creation of used Model3D also if the UIElemet3D is not added to Viewport3D.
• Improved the MaterialTypeConverter to support creating a DiffuseMaterial with ImageBrush from image resource name - for example Material="/Resources/PowerToysTexture.png".
• Improved line arrows - improved displayed when camera is pointing almost in the direction of the line.
• Improved 3D PolyLines - lines are now connected to each other.

• Fixed for using in PartiallyTrusted environment - using Hand cursor instead of custom cursor.
• Automatically Disable / Enable the MouseCameraController and CameraControlPanel if Traget Camera's IsEnabled property is changed.
• Fixed using StartLineCap and EndLineCap on PolyLines.
• Improved DoubleClick event in EventManager3D - now the DoubleClick event does not trigger the Click event on the second click (if the DoubleClick event is subscribed).
• Fixed normalizing normals in MeshUtils.CalculateNormals method.
• Fixed using TargetViewport3DName property on Cameras in Visual Studio Design Time - in Design Time there is no NameScope so the FindName method does not work. To fix this the code looks for Viewport3D manually by checking the Camera's Parents Children. This means that the Camera must be defined under the same parent as the Viewport3D in order that the TargetViewport3DName works in Design Time.
• Fixed using StartLineCap and EndLineCap on PolyLines.
• BREAKING CHANGE: Fixed Bank - now the positive bank values rotate the camera in the clockwise direction (before the direction was counter-clockwise). For example bank angle 30 means that the Camera is rotated as a head would be bended to the right.

 Subscribe to RSS feed to Blog posts related to Ab3d.PowerToys.