Vista - Glass in WPF?

Can someone please point me to an article or primer how to do 3D glass
objects in WPF? I'm particularly interested in advice how to specify the
material in order to get the right refractional, translucent and reflecting
properties. Is there some way?

Jürgen Makowka
Senior Programmer
Albat + Wirsam Software AG
Linden, Germany

Are you trying to make the chrome of a window be Glass, like would happen on
Vista?
Or are you trying to use it within your application?
What OS are you targeting? Vista only? XP and Vista?

Thx, Rob Relyea
WPF, PM
http://longhornblogs.com/rrelyea

"Jrgen Makowka [A+W]" <jm@a-w.de> wrote in message
news:03E43BA2-72D8-4AF0-B204-CBB185E40836@microsoft.com...
> Can someone please point me to an article or primer how to do 3D glass
> objects in WPF? I'm particularly interested in advice how to specify the
> material in order to get the right refractional, translucent and
> reflecting properties. Is there some way?
>
> Jürgen Makowka
> Senior Programmer
> Albat + Wirsam Software AG
> Linden, Germany

I try to do a visualization of glazing units (like IGUs or laminated saftey
glass). So it's not about UI elements but really an app creating a WPF 3D
scene with multiple glass objects in it. I will be targeting Vista and XP.

Regards
Jürgen Makowka
Albat + Wirsam Software AG

"Rob Relyea [MSFT]" <Rob.Relyea@microsoft.nospam.com> wrote in message
news:uWwfxrbTGHA.5116@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> Are you trying to make the chrome of a window be Glass, like would happen
> on Vista?
> Or are you trying to use it within your application?
> What OS are you targeting? Vista only? XP and Vista?
>
> Thx, Rob Relyea
> WPF, PM
> http://longhornblogs.com/rrelyea
>
> "Jrgen Makowka [A+W]" <jm@a-w.de> wrote in message
> news:03E43BA2-72D8-4AF0-B204-CBB185E40836@microsoft.com...
>> Can someone please point me to an article or primer how to do 3D glass
>> objects in WPF? I'm particularly interested in advice how to specify the
>> material in order to get the right refractional, translucent and
>> reflecting properties. Is there some way?
>>
>> Jürgen Makowka
>> Senior Programmer
>> Albat + Wirsam Software AG
>> Linden, Germany
>
>

Have you tried setting the opacity to 10% or so & adding a BlurEffect to the
control?

I have played around with the opacity. I tried adding SpecularMaterial and
even a very faint EmissiveMaterial. I also set the
GeometryModel3d.BackMaterial property. The results are quite promising when
viewed against a black background. However, as soon as there are solid
objects in the scene, the refractional quality of glass is missing. Maybe
the BlurEffect can help here. I didn't think of this before. Thanks for the
hint! I'll definitely try it.

Jürgen Makowka
Albat + Wirsam Software AG

"Keith Patrick" <richard_keith_patrick@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23ne3lMpTGHA.4884@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> Have you tried setting the opacity to 10% or so & adding a BlurEffect to
> the control?
>

If you're looking for 'refraction' effect, you won't get the desired
results by blurring it. You need something different. Maybe you've hurd
about environment bump maps. They're used to emulate surfaces like
bumpy metal sheets for example (you could call them also reflection
bump maps). But you don't need reflection. You need refraction
(refraction bump maps). But this goes well into the world of 3D
programming (I'm talking lower level, Direct3D stuff), which I think
it's pretty computationally expensive. Of course, there may be other
simpler ways, Photoshop-like, which I'm not aware of.

Anyway, AFAIK you actually need to implement an effect yourself.

Are there any tutorials on the internet that provide information on how
to extend the existing functionality of WPF? For example I want to be
able to output a webcam video preview to a variety of controls in WPF.
I am not too deep into WPF right now, just starting, but I've seen a
couple of demos which were able to output video files to various
elements in the UI. IIRC there was a MediaElement used. What do I need
in order to achieve this?

Thanks,
Cosmin.