Where can I find some sample WPF animations?

Question

As I am a programmer,and not an artist or animator and I am failing at showing off the best features of WPF in my application. Although I have samples for simple animations for buttons like growing, or having the color fade into something brighter on click but what I am looking for is some showcase button animations and some showcase panel change animations to show off the best features of WPF. Normally I would go for the more subtle changes, but in a couple of cases I need something to really show off the advantages of using WPF over WinForms technology.

Can anyone point me at some button samples and/or panel changing (switching from one panel to the next in a navigation) that really shows of WPF and has that wow factor.

EDIT

Please don't point to http://codeproject.com or the microsoft samples, as I have already perused those at great detail. In fact here are the list of WPF sites in my rss reader (Suggestions for other blogs welcome):

Lester's WPF blog, Ask Dr. WPF, Expression Blend and Design, WPF Wonderland, nerdplusart, Karl On WPF, Windows Presentation Foundation SDK, Josh Smith on WPF, Rob Relyea - Xamlified, The Moth.

I want specific examples, thanks...

Solution 1

Honestly I think the best way to learn is to use an animation tool. If you have access to Expression Blend you can use it to learn a lot about how WPF animations are setup in Xaml. There are many nuances to animation, like keyframe easing, that are just hard to understand and get right by plucking away at IntelliSense in Visual Studio.

As I’ve mentioned before, many people have access to Expression Blend and don’t realize it. Many college students and some high school students get it free through DreamSpark. Corporations that have MSDN licenses get it. Startups can also get it through the BizSpark program.

At any rate, if you’re interested in learning animations through Expression Blend, these starter videos on Channel 9 are a decent place to start:

Animation Using Expression Blend: How to create an animation

Animation Using Expression Blend: How to start animations on events

Animation Using Expression Blend: How to make an animation follow a path

Finally, I’ll leave you with a little teaser that animations get even more fun in a yet-to-be announced release of Blend. Keep an eye on Mix in March for more information.

Solution 2

Also check out animation of rippling water, with raindrops falling in the water:

http://stuff.seans.com/2008/08/24/raindrop-animation-in-wpf/

I'm biased, but I think it's a nice demo of the power of doing 3D animation in WPF.

Solution 3

How about Cool Control Template for WPF Button?

Solution 4

PhotoSuru is a cool application with many animations and various graphical effects (it uses pixel shaders too)

Solution 5

you can have a look at family.show http://www.codeplex.com/familyshow

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Comments

[Kris Erickson]

More like it, but it doesn't really have much animation.

[Kris Erickson]

There's no source code to Blu. And if you have heard the interviews with them, most of them are done with pre-rendered collections of PNG's (flip book style) and not with the power of WPF.

[Ben]

I had no idea that DreamSpark existed, or that it was so easy to get set up on! +1 for mentioning it

[DonBoitnott]

That's a dead link.