Silverlight 3 Writable Bitmaps
A very useful feature of Silverlight 3 is its ability to render any UI element to a Bitmap. This capability is already used internally by Silverlight 3 to cache rendered controls but the possibilities extend much further than performance improvements. In games programming for example if you need to create a reflection in a scene in real-time, this is now an easy task using the WritableBitmap class.
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To start with we have a grid containing four cells. The top-left cell is rendered as normal using a Button, TextBlock, TextBox and an Image that can be rotated. The three remaining grid cells contain ContentControl elements with rotations applied to give the impression of reflection, the content property of these is set at runtime:
<UserControl x:Class="WritableBitmap.MainPage"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Width="400" Height="300">
<Canvas x:Name="LayoutRoot">
<Grid Canvas.Left="100" Canvas.Top="10" Background="White">
<Grid.Resources>
<Storyboard x:Name="RotateYStoryBoard">
<DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetName="rotation" Storyboard.TargetProperty="RotationY" From="0.0" To="360.0" Duration="0:0:10" RepeatBehavior="Forever" />
</Storyboard>
</Grid.Resources>
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="200" />
<ColumnDefinition />
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition />
<RowDefinition />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Grid x:Name="scene" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Background="White">
<Border CornerRadius="4" BorderBrush="#888888" BorderThickness="2">
<StackPanel HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch">
<Button Content="Rotate Image" Width="100" Height="30" Margin="2" Click="Button_Click" />
<TextBlock Text="Some Text!" FontSize="16" Margin="2">
<TextBlock.Effect>
<DropShadowEffect ShadowDepth="4" />
</TextBlock.Effect>
</TextBlock>
<TextBox Width="100" Height="30" FontSize="18" Margin="2" />
<Image Source="Sydney.JPG" Width="100" Margin="2">
<Image.Projection>
<PlaneProjection x:Name="rotation" />
</Image.Projection>
</Image>
</StackPanel>
</Border>
</Grid>
<Grid Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1">
<Grid.Projection>
<PlaneProjection RotationY="180" />
</Grid.Projection>
<ContentControl x:Name="reflection1" Opacity="0.6" />
<Rectangle Fill="#20ff0000" />
</Grid>
<Grid Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="0">
<Grid.Projection>
<PlaneProjection RotationX="180" />
</Grid.Projection>
<ContentControl x:Name="reflection2" Opacity="0.6" />
<Rectangle Fill="#2000ff00" />
</Grid>
<Grid Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1">
<Grid.Projection>
<PlaneProjection RotationX="180" RotationY="180" />
</Grid.Projection>
<ContentControl x:Name="reflection3" />
<Rectangle Fill="#200000ff" />
</Grid>
</Grid>
</Canvas>
</UserControl>
The C# simply contains the Click event to handle the image rotation, the interesting part is the use of the WritableImage class to render the UI Element scene to a static bitmap:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Animation;
using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;
using System.Windows.Shapes;
using System.Windows.Threading;
namespace WritableBitmap
{
public partial class MainPage : UserControl
{
private DispatcherTimer _timer = new DispatcherTimer();
private WriteableBitmap _reflectedImage = new WriteableBitmap(200, 100, PixelFormats.Bgr32);
public MainPage()
{
InitializeComponent();
_timer.Interval = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 0, 20);
_timer.Tick += new EventHandler(Tick);
_timer.Start();
}
protected void Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
_reflectedImage = new WriteableBitmap((int)scene.RenderSize.Width, (int)scene.RenderSize.Height, PixelFormats.Bgr32);
_reflectedImage.Render(scene, new TranslateTransform());
reflection1.Content = new Image() { Source = _reflectedImage };
reflection2.Content = new Image() { Source = _reflectedImage };
reflection3.Content = new Image() { Source = _reflectedImage };
}
private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
RotateYStoryBoard.Begin();
}
}
}
We use a DispatcherTimer that frequently calls the Tick() method, and in this method we create our WritableBitmap instance and call its Render method which simply converts any UI Element into a bitmap. We then set the source of our three reflected ContentControl elements to this bitmap.
Rendering UI Elements to bitmaps is a simple but powerful addition to Silverlight and opens up a host of new applications such as graphic packages and as already mentioned special effects in games.
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