Can you make 3d product models in SilverLight 3?

Question

I've been using ViewPoint to make 3d models for some time, but I'm intrigued with the prospect of moving those models to Silverlight. I have pretty good asp.net experience but have never created a Silverlight App. Are there any good tutorials out there on creating 3d models in Silverlight 3 beta?

Answer 1

You can do this, even in Silverlight 2, using the Kit3D engine for Silverlight.

This library provides Silverlight with a 3D engine very similar to WPF's Media3D tools.

Answer 2

See Reed's answer - Kit3D is your best bet (whether Silverlight 2.0 or 3.0) - check out some examples.

If you've read about the new '3D capabilities of Silverlight 3.0', it is not actually a complete 3D system (a-la WPF) but rather a new type of Transform that (basically) "renders a flat surface in 3D space".

It's called PlaneProjection and lets you do stuff like this and this. It is great for flipping stuff around (like a carousel control) and similar effects (also implementing Photosynth where the deepzoomimages need to be positioned in '3D'), but NOT really capable of rendering a 3D model as such.

If you decide to play with Kit3D (or WPF's 3D stuff) the Charles Petzold book really helped me understand the basics of it all...