Silverlight: Create image from silverlight controls - c#

Is it possible to generate an image from a silverlight control so that the control would render itself and its contents to an image so that I can do sime pixel manipulation on the image?

There is no way to achieve this in Silverlight 2. I have seen people work around this limitation by posting XAML to a server which would use WPF to render it to a bitmap (using RenderTargetBitmap) and return an image.
However, the just released Silverlight 3 Beta includes a WritableBitmap class which can be used to render a Silverlight UIElement into pixels. In the beta there is however a limitation; once you render an element into the bitmap you cannot access its pixels. This restriction should be eased somewhat in the final release.
Silverlight 3 Beta also includes pixel shaders, so you can write a custom shader in HLSL and apply it to any UIElement - this might be the best solution for you. This tutorial video should get you started on writing and using pixel shaders in Silverlight 3 Beta. http://silverlight.net/learn/learnvideo.aspx?video=187303

After searching the Silverlight forums, it seems that this feature isn't available yet, despite many requests. Although, Silverlight 3 beta was just released this week and I'm not sure what the status is on this issue in regards to that release.
http://silverlight.net/forums/p/12240/39427.aspx
http://silverlight.net/forums/t/17109.aspx
http://silverlight.net/forums/p/18438/62854.aspx

Related

Render an image in SurfaceImageSource with direct2D

I'm making a Windows Store Application that display really big images in a ScrollViewer.
The source image is very big and the rendering with the Image is bad (because the Image is really smaller than the source image, so the scaling make the result ugly).
I want to use direct2D to have a better rendering (the project is in c#).
I'm really new to this, so I don't really know how to do... I've found those links that seems interesting:
XAML SurfaceImageSource DirectX interop sample (Windows 8.1)
How to Draw a BitmapSource Using Direct2D
The SurfaceImageSource sample is good, but only shows how to render sharpes...
And I don't know how to use the second links with SurfaceImageSource.
Is there anybody who have a good example about this? Thanks!
I think you can try VirtualSurfaceImageSource.It can render large image.
Learn more:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh825871.aspx

how to save Canvas as image in WINRT using c# [duplicate]

I am developing a paint like application in metro style with C#/XAML. I want to save whatever content is drawn on canvas as image. I have checked this solutions but it didn't helped me.
Save canvas to bitmap
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/saveenr/archive/2008/09/18/wpf-xaml-saving-a-window-or-canvas-as-a-png-bitmap.aspx
So how can I save the canvas content as image ? Please help me with sample coding.
The accepted answer from Sascha is no longer true for Windows 8.1. There is a new RenderTargetBitmap class that allows Rendered XAML to be converted to a bitmap.
See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.ui.xaml.media.imaging.rendertargetbitmap.aspx
However I can't seem to render that XAML is Collapsed or otherwise not currently on screen. Any help with that would be appreciated!
It seems it is currently not supported out of the box like we were used to do it with WPF:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winappswithcsharp/thread/dd66c749-efed-4b55-a716-e0aa3a637d28
While when doing HTML5/Javascript Metro apps you can do this:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winappswithhtml5/thread/cf8c17dc-68d4-4777-951f-bb7f0665bd06
The standard approach in other xaml frameworks such as Silverlight and WP7 was to use WriteableBitmap, however the version in WinRT doesn't have a constructor that takes a xaml element which leads me to believe that it's currently impossible against the latest API.
Sorry I couldn't be more help/
One workaround is to use Direct2D with DirectWrite. It is a bit involved, but I might make a library available at some point.

Windows 8 Metro App - Render PNGs

I am needing to render some custom PNGs in a Windows 8 app.
Basically I need to create a custom live tile by putting some drawings made in my app on top of an image for a live tile, and the only way to do this is render a PNG to disk, see here.
What library should I use to do this? My first thought was to use a Xaml UserControl and RenderTargetBitmap, but it is not available in a Metro app.
WinRT XAML Toolkit has some extension methods for WriteableBitmap that you could use too. You could probably use WriteableBitmapLoadExtensions for loading and WriteableBitmapSaveExtensions for saving. It has a fairly limited blitting capability though since that is exposed by WriteableBitmapEx already and simple to write anyway. WriteableBitmapBlitBlockExtensions is only a method to blit a full width block of pixels from bitmaps of same width.
Edit* RenderTargetBitmap is now available in Windows 8.1. It doesn't support some elements though (I think it doesn't render camera previews, media elements and perhaps WebViews).
Currently the only option is to use DirectX (or SharpDX) to create your image. You'll probably have to recreate the drawing using the low-level DirectX APIs.
WritableBitmapEx might also be helpful if your drawings are simple.

How would one go about creating one’s own graphics effect in WPF?

I have an Image object in my application which the user can drag around. The object displays an image which is partly transparent, so the window background (which is itself a bitmap) can be seen through it.
I want to add a graphics effect to this object. Assume that I already have an algorithm for this effect — that’s not the issue. The issue is how to get this algorithm into WPF.
So I tried to look at how DropShadowEffect works, but the implementation displayed in Reflector is empty. I also tried to look at what methods from the abstract classes Effect and ShaderEffect I should override and there doesn’t seem to be anything related to actually rendering an effect.
So how do I create my own effect?
The best and fastest way is to use pixel shaders (supported starting with WPF 3.5 SP1 I think) . It will require some shader language (HLSL) knowledge, though :-)
Here is a tutorial: How Do I: Create Custom Pixel Shader Effects for WPF
a library on codeplex: Windows Presentation Foundation Pixel Shader Effects Library
an article with .NET 4 information (including Sliverlight support which has it too): SilverShader – Introduction to Silverlight and WPF Pixel Shaders
A very cool tool (and resource) is Shazzam it will help you to create the effects and it contains a nice tutorial.

SlimDX and WPF (DirectX 11)

I want to use SlimDX (DirectX 11) to render the contents of an Image in WPF.
The problem is that I can't find a way to link the SwapChain to a D3DImage. (The DirectX 11 example uses the SlimDX RenderForm.)
Direct3D 10 and 11 are not too different in API or how they work. A SwapChain is used to present to an hWnd, not required to render. This is the same with DX10, and even the very different DX9.
In any case, this example I made should be enough to help you take your Texture2D that you render to and pass it to WPF. Don't remember if I finished the DX11, but it's pretty much the same thing.
http://jmorrill.hjtcentral.com/Home/tabid/428/EntryId/437/Direct3D-10-11-Direct2D-in-WPF.aspx
You might want to go take a look a Jeremiah Morill's DirectCanvas implementation on Codeplex. He is also very helpful if you drop him a line.
Look at the WPF example in the DX10 examples. It should work about the same for DX11 I think. Because the D3DImage only works with DX9 stuff, you need to use a dx10/11 shared texture.

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