3D borders

[jinksk]

I am looking for a way to create 3D effects with my borders. I am new to the Pallette designer and was wondering if any one had found a way to do this.


Thanks in advance
jinksk

[Chris Porter]

What kind of 3d borders are you trying to create? Are you trying to create the illusion of a shadow? Are you trying to do some form of bevel?

[jinksk]

What kind of 3d borders are you trying to create? Are you trying to create the illusion of a shadow? Are you trying to do some form of bevel?

Chris;
Actually I am I have different cases where I will need to create both types of borders. Basically I need the same capability the Standard .NET controls have with their 3D Border settings (Sunken, Raised, Inset, Outset, etc.) and in other places I will need to create a shadow effect.

Thanks ahead of time.
jinksk

[Chris Porter]

I believe you can accomplish what you want but its going to take some tweaking in the palette settings to create similar appearances. That said, if you want your controls to look like standard windows forms, why use Krypton?

[jinksk]

I believe you can accomplish what you want but its going to take some tweaking in the palette settings to create similar appearances. That said, if you want your controls to look like standard windows forms, why use Krypton?

Chris;
Because there are things you can do with third party controls (like Krypton, Syncfusion, Infragistics, etc.) that go way beyond the capabilities of the standard Windows controls; however, most of them preclude some of the standard capabilities of the .NET forms controls: such as 3D Borders. Most of them try to implement 3D by skinning their backgrounds with transitional effects. This gives the control a 3D look in relationship to its own borders; however, because the border is not 3D, you cannot give the control a 3D look in relation to the form/container it resides in. Achieving this effect gives the appearance of true layering: as one finds in ASP.

I realize that I can achieve true layering with WPF and Silverlight; however, the customer refuses to upgrade their systems to .NET 3.0+. That leaves me with trying to achieve 3D the old fashion way: without the benefits of XAML. Any tutelage you can offer would be appreciated.

[Chris Porter]

I'm curious what can be done with the border properties by setting 2 colors and setting the color style to a gradient. This might not work at all but that is where I would start. Start in InputControls -> Standalone -> StateCommon in your global palette.

[jinksk]

I'm curious what can be done with the border properties by setting 2 colors and setting the color style to a gradient. This might not work at all but that is where I would start. Start in InputControls -> Standalone -> StateCommon in your global palette.

Tried that. The Solid Line gradients would be best; however, they can only do one side or all sides, What is needed is to have a gradient that paints 2 adjacent sides with the two colors (1 inside the other) and then painted the two opposite sides with the same 2 colors only reversed: the one that was on the inside now on the outside.

"And the one on the right was on the left, and the one on the front was in the middle..."

[Chris Porter]

Yeah, after I posted that I tried it and had the same results. You might be able to use an background image assigned to the border and have it scale (or be pre-sized properly). The issue with scaling is it will skew the border area that you need. With the source code it probably wouldn't be too difficult to add in support for borders drawn in individual pieces and rotated 90 degrees around each face of the control.