Rotating Images at NI Week 2009

[buckidge]

If you watch the NI Week Web UI Keynote talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dWrc-R23zk; at 3min8sec they mention that the wind-vanes shown are rotating images (and obviously have some transparency).... "Images we've applied a rotation animation to"

This looks VERY slick, but I can't figure out how this would be implemented.

How was this implemented? I've seen various discussions on this when googling the problem, but no good solutions.

[Christina_R]

Web UI Builder is implemented on Microsoft Silverlight technology.

[David_L]

This was done in the LabVIEW WebUI builder, which is a different product than standard LabVIEW and is not quite released yet.  However seeing as they mentioned it at NI week means it must be coming along soon :-D.

I don't think this is possible in standard LabVIEW, but maybe others on here have other ideas.  

[David_L]

Darn, you beat me to it by just a few seconds...

[Christina_R]

LabVIEW does not currently have image rotation capabilties (although I suppose you could probably write the image transformation algorithm and render it in a picture control).

LabVIEW does, however, support image transparency. If you import images to the clipboard via the Edit menu (Import Picture to Clipboard) and browse to a file that contains transparency (e.g. a PNG with an alpha channel), the transparency information will be preserved when you paste into a VI. (Note that copying and pasting an image through the system clipboard will not preserve the transparency information in LabVIEW).

[justin.goeres]

Dragging a PNG file onto a front panel (or block diagram) as a decoration also preserves transparency.  I find this easier than going the Edit >> Import Picture to Clipboard... route.

[francois-normandin · Accepted solution]

Placing a series of pictures in a "picture ring" and rotating through the cases can give you a similar effect.

Simply add cases to your picture ring and drag the png with a transparent background (as noted by Justin).

[SimonH]

Recreating the Web UI Builder demo in LabVIEW is fairly easy.  I've posted an example with a quick write up here - http://decibel.ni.com/content/groups/ui/blog/2010/09/13/windmill-ui-example

[buckidge]

Thanks for the details, Norm. I gather this is how it's done, which is what I was looking for. Unfortunately though, I don't really like the answer as it is fairly clumsy with all the work required with rotations in powerpoint.

Maybe I should write a VI to make it happen easier.

Thanks.