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Drop Shadows:
adxSuperPanel draws the
shadow using transferred regions. The shadow appears as a visual extension of
the control. To look believable, cast shadow should mimic its source. adxSuperPanel clones of the client GraphicPath,
and paints each region in its place. But this is not enough. What happens if you start to modify
the transparency level of either regions? The transparency level of the main
client is 57. The shade region will start to show underneath the client region:
If
Not gpShadow Is Nothing Then
shadowGradientBrush =
Me.CreateShadowBrushWithSoftness(gpShadow)
shadowRegion = New Region(gpShadow)
g.FillRegion(mainBrush, mainRegion)
g.FillRegion(shadowGradientBrush,
shadowRegion)
End If
Not good. The entire trick is falling apart. The solution, is to exclude
each region from the other.
If Not
gpShadow Is
Nothing Then
shadowGradientBrush =
Me.CreateShadowBrushWithSoftness(gpShadow)
shadowRegion = New Region(gpShadow)
shadowRegion.Exclude(mainRegion) 'excludes
the shade region from the main region
g.FillRegion(mainBrush, mainRegion)
g.FillRegion(shadowGradientBrush, shadowRegion)
End If
With same Transparency level the control looks much better:
Shadow Softness: This is
a sour point. I have used a GradientLinearBrush
with one surrounding color. This property, is not working very
well. The path is excellent with round objects but it misses the point with square
or not so round corners. To create true shadow softness you need to control
individual
pixels on the edge. The property works with shadow no wider than 5 pixels. You can try to
work with the Transparency
property of the shadow to create a better looking
effect.
Control designers often
restrict property values from going awry. We have done nothing of sorts here.
You may go and create some funny oddballs, where the border width property
exceeds the width of the control. We were very careful to put some limits where
things can crash.
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