WPF capabilities

Question

In my company we have in mind a redesign of the user interface of an application and we would like to make it ... let say "fancy". We have in mind a simple story board but I doubt between WPF, XNA or DirectX. I prefer WPF so I'd need to know if it support the following capabilities and how difficult to implement are they:

1. Transparency: We'd like to display information layers on top of the main display.
2. 3D support: We want network nodes (part of the interface is a network graphic) to be simple spheres connected with lines in a 3D enviroment, and the ability to control the camera so rotation of the screen is possible.
3. Effects: Such as shading, lens flare or glow to "signal" the discovery or deletion of a node.
4. Text animations: Specifically the ability to display the text as if it's being written... You know, the information text will be "filling" the panel top down, left to right...

Answer 1

AFAIK WPF 3.5 supports all of this, and even leverages hardware acceleration to get a decent performance.

Answer 2

Good news. WPF is the technology you want and it can handle your requirements with relative ease.

1. Transparency is simple.
2. 3D support is good as well. For an example, check out Tim Sneath: Five Great WPF 3D Nuggets. You even get hardware acceleration.
3. Effects are definitely do-able via timeline animations.
4. The previous statement goes double for Text Animations.

...the hardest part would be the 3D support, but it's still going to be a lot easier than getting things done in XNA or using DirectX libraries directly.

Answer 3

It's possible to embed an XNA application in a WPF form so you could use XNA for the representation of your network and WPF controls for the GUI in front of it.