Yet another blog about WPF, Surface, SL, MVVM, NUI....

Hello, Here is my first post about WPF and Mogre, maybe it will helps some people... The subject of today is "How to use a screenshot of a WPF elements and put it as an texture on your Mogre object"...

Why ? Because WPF enable you to create very rich interface and so great image to place on you differents elements...

By the way, I let you follow the link at the end of the post to learn how to blend Mogre in WPF and how to take a screenShot of a WPF visual.

The steps to follow are these :

1. Create a screenshot of the WPF visual (any visual can be used),
2. Put the bitmap in a stream and then to a buffer,
3. Use some unsafe code to create a Mogre MemoryStream and a mogre image,
4. Use this image to create a texture,
5. Use this texture in a material,
6. Put it on the mesh of your choice

Create a screenshot of the WPF visual

The original code is from thomas lebrun and can be found in any good WPF book :

Visual theVisual = this ; //Put the aimed visual here.
double width = Convert.ToDouble(theVisual.GetValue(FrameworkElement.WidthProperty));
double height = Convert.ToDouble(theVisual.GetValue(FrameworkElement.HeightProperty));
if (double.IsNaN(width) || double.IsNaN(height))
{
throw new FormatException("You need to indicate the Width and Height values of the UIElement.");
}
RenderTargetBitmap render = new RenderTargetBitmap(
      Convert.ToInt32(width),
      Convert.ToInt32(this.GetValue(FrameworkElement.HeightProperty)),
      96,
      96,
      PixelFormats.Pbgra32);
// Indicate which control to render in the image
render.Render(this);
Stream oStream = new MemoryStream();
PngBitmapEncoder encoder = new PngBitmapEncoder();
encoder.Frames.Add(BitmapFrame.Create(render));
encoder.Save(oStream);
oStream.Flush();

Put the bitmap in a stream and then to a buffer

//Back to the start of the stream
 oStream.Position = 0;
 
//read all the stream
BinaryReader oBinaryReader = new BinaryReader(oStream);
byte[] pBuffer = oBinaryReader.ReadBytes((int)oBinaryReader.BaseStream.Length);
oStream.Close(); //No more needed
TextureManager.Singleton.Remove(sName); //Remove eventually texture with the same name

Create the texture

unsafe
         {
            GCHandle handle = GCHandle.Alloc(pBuffer, GCHandleType.Pinned);
            byte* pUnsafeByte = (byte*)handle.AddrOfPinnedObject();
            void* pUnsafeBuffer = (void*)handle.AddrOfPinnedObject();
 
            MemoryDataStream oMemoryStream = new MemoryDataStream(pUnsafeBuffer, (uint)pBuffer.Length);
            DataStreamPtr oPtrDataStream = new DataStreamPtr(oMemoryStream);
            oMogreImage = oMogreImage.Load(oPtrDataStream, "png");
 
            TextureManager.Singleton.LoadImageW(sName, ResourceGroupManager.DEFAULT_RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME, oMogreImage);
 
            //handle.Free();
         }

Use this texture in a material

Here is the code of how you can create a material with this texture:

_dynamicMaterial = MaterialManager.Singleton.Create(SCREENSHOT_MATERIAL_NAME, ResourceGroupManager.DEFAULT_RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME);
Pass pass = _dynamicMaterial.GetTechnique(0).GetPass(0);
 
TextureUnitState tus = pass.CreateTextureUnitState(SCREENSHOT_TEXTURE_NAME);
_dynamicMaterial.GetTechnique(0).GetPass(0).AddTextureUnitState(tus);

Then you just have to use it as a normal texture...

An example:

Here is a little screenshot of the results. I display a cube with the face using as a texture a screenshot of the window in which it is....

Link: how to blend Mogre in WPF