Many thanks to Rod Stephens and the good people at Wiley Computer Publishing, for granting us permission to use this chapter from Rod's Custom Controls Library book. The FlapFlag control is only 1 of the 101 controls that Rod shows you how to build in his book. Be sure to check out Rod's excellent VB-Helper site and the publishers Wiley Computer Publishing. You can download the Custom Control project here or on the downloads page.

Image Processing

Visual Basic's Image and PictureBox controls display pictures, but they provide only limited support for manipulating those pictures. The controls described in this chapter allow an application to manipulate pictures in many different ways.

The FlappingFlag control displays an animated image. The image is warped in a wavy pattern so it appears to be a flag flapping in the wind. This can add a little interest and whimsy to a program or Web page.

Enabled: Determines whether the control flaps

FlappedImage: Returns a warped image

Magnitude: The amount by which the flag is displaced vertically in pixels

Picture: The picture to display

The FlappingFlag control is easy to use. When a program sets the Picture property, the control automatically creates the images it needs to display the animation. The Enabled property allows the program to start and stop the flapping.

The FlappingFlag control contains a constituent control array of PictureBoxes named FlapPict. When the control is loaded, it uses Visual Basic's Load command to create as many FlapPict controls as will be needed to store and display the animation images. For example, the following code shows how the InitProperties event handler loads the FlapPict controls:

Const MaxFlaps = 5

Private Sub UserControl_InitProperties()
Dim i As Integer

    For i = 1 To MaxFlaps
        Load FlapPict(i)
    Next i
    m_Magnitude = m_def_Magnitude

    FlagWid = 60
    FlagHgt = 100
End Sub

When the control's Picture property is modified, the property procedure calls the MakePictures subroutine to create the warped images used in the animation.

Public Property Set Picture(ByVal New_Picture As Picture)
    Set OrigPict.Picture = New_Picture

    ' Make the flapping pictures.
    MakePictures

    PropertyChanged "Picture"
End Property

MakePictures generates the images needed for the animation and stores them in the FlapPict array. It begins by making all of the pictures the same size and by erasing them. It then uses PaintPicture to copy vertical slices of the original picture into the animation images. The slices are offset vertically by a distance determined by a sine function. The sine function's phase is shifted slightly for each image, so the images appear to flap when animated.

Private Sub MakePictures()
Const PI = 3.14159265

Dim i As Integer
Dim offset As Single
Dim Doffset As Single
Dim Yoffset As Single
Dim Yoffset1 As Single
Dim X As Single
Dim dx As Single

    FlagWid = OrigPict.Width
    FlagHgt = OrigPict.Height + 4 * (m_Magnitude)
    UserControl_Resize

    ' Make all the pictures the same.
    For i = 0 To MaxFlaps
        Set FlapPict(i).Picture = OrigPict.Picture
        FlapPict(i).Height = FlagHgt
        FlapPict(i).Line (0, 0)-(FlagWid, FlagHgt), _
            UserControl.BackColor, BF
    Next i

    offset = 0
    Doffset = 2 * PI / (MaxFlaps + 1)
    dx = FlagWid / (2.5 * PI)
    For i = 0 To MaxFlaps
        Yoffset1 = m_Magnitude * Sin(offset)
        For X = 0 To FlagWid - 1
            Yoffset = m_Magnitude * _
                (2 + Sin(offset + X / dx))
            FlapPict(i).PaintPicture _
                OrigPict.Picture, _
                X, Yoffset - Yoffset1, _
                1, FlagHgt, X, 0, 1, FlagHgt
        Next X
        FlapPict(i).Picture = FlapPict(i).Image
        offset = offset + Doffset
    Next i

    Set UserControl.Picture = FlapPict(0).Picture
End Sub

The last important piece to the FlappingFlag control is the FlapTimer constituent control. FlapTimer's Timer event handler displays the next image in the flapping sequence.

Dim Showing As Integer

Private Sub FlapTimer_Timer()
    Showing = (Showing + 1) Mod (MaxFlaps + 1)
    Set UserControl.Picture = _
        FlapPict(Showing).Picture
End Sub

It would be easy to make the number of images presented by this control a property rather than a constant. It would also be simple to delegate an Interval property to the FlapTimer control. That would allow the application developer to determine the speed at which the flag flapped.

When it creates its warped images, the control makes the edges of some pictures rather rough and jagged. The control could smooth these edges using antialiasing techniques similar to those used by the AliasLabel control described in Chapter 5, Labels.This would produce smoother animation images, but creating the images would take longer.

Custom Controls Library