PictureBox Transparent

[TCanuck42]

Hi. I have a picturebox control with an image that is a GIF. The image is not an animation, only a single frame. The background of the image is transparent, as i erased it in photo shop. What code can i use to make the rest of the picturebox transparent, so there isnt a box around my circular GIF object? I want a result like in visual basic 6.0 with an image control. is there an image control for vb.net?

[joe1985]

If you look under the properties for the picturebox, choose "BackColor" the first choice under "Web" is Transparent. Try that.

- Joe

[TCanuck42]

Thanks but that doesnt work. What that does is colour the back of the picturebox to match that of the form. If i have many picture boxes on the screen to create a larger image, there is still a rectangle surrounding the main image. The image itself has a transparent background, so what i am seeing is the picturebox's background. How can the picturebox's background, not the actual images, be transparent? Are there any controls i can download?

[Craig Gemmill]

The best way to do this is to simply draw the image directly over the form by overriding the OnPaint event:

Public Class Form1

    Private _myImage As New Bitmap("C:\myImage.gif")

    Protected Overrides Sub OnPaint(ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs)
        MyBase.OnPaint(e)

        e.Graphics.DrawImageUnscaled(New Bitmap(_myImage), 100, 100)
    End Sub
End Class

You can get a lot more creative, but that's the idea.

[HanneSThEGreaT]

TCanuck : What do you mean by :

there is still a rectangle surrounding the main image

¿

This is perhaps a dumb comment / question from my side, but Did you perhaps set the Picturebox's BorderStyle to something different than None

Because, no matter how I try, I cannot replicate the same behaviour you've found.

I made 2 GIFs, both with Transparent Backgrounds. I added 2 Pictureboxes to my form, then, in each Picturebox, added each respective picture. With one Picturebox ( The Arrow ), I set the BorderStyle to None.
With the second Picturebox ( The Doughnut ), I set the BorderStyle to FixedSingle

I did not add any code.

And this is what I got at run time :

[TCanuck42]

I have a gradient set as the background to an picturebox. I meant that regardless of whether or not the GIF is transparent or not, their is still a solid colored rectangle surrounding the image. You can see what i mean if you set a picture to a picturebox behind the arrow and then set the arrows backcolor to transparent.

I did, however, discover that if you execute the following code, the "arrow" in you example will be transparent to the picturebox behind it.

picArrow.Parent = PictureBox

Now, when there is code that moves the arrow's top and left attributes, there is a slight flickering/blinking effect. How can this be removed?

[HanneSThEGreaT]

Have a look here, it explains why the flickering occur :
http://www.codeguru.com/forum/showpo...45&postcount=4

[TCanuck42]

Thanks for the reply. All three options sound good. Could you please explain just how i could execute option 1, and if that doesn't work, option 2? Thanks in advance!

[HanneSThEGreaT]

For method 1, Try putting this in your Constructor :

SetStyle(ControlStyles.DoubleBuffer, True)
SetStyle(ControlStyles.UserPaint, True)
SetStyle(ControlStyles.AllPaintingInWmPaint, True)

[TCanuck42]

Sorry, but i haven't worked much with constructors and destructors. please explain. thanks in advance

[HanneSThEGreaT]

OK, try this :

    Public Sub New()
        MyBase.New()
        
        SetStyle(ControlStyles.DoubleBuffer, True)
        SetStyle(ControlStyles.UserPaint, True)
        SetStyle(ControlStyles.AllPaintingInWmPaint, True)
    End Sub

[TCanuck42]

Thanks for the prompt reply. I added that code to my Form and ran the program and there was an error. It said it was missing the "InitializeComponent" command so i added it in and then there were no more errors, but the flickering still occurred. Should i have done something else, or so i need to call the sub somewhere?

[HanneSThEGreaT]

Hmm...
Could you perhaps attach your project ¿

[TCanuck42]

My project is very large, so i will create a sample of what i'm using and what is happening. As you walk around in the demo I made (its like a game), you'll notice once you go over objects or you are walking against a collision detector, there is a lot of flickering. Hope this helps!

By the way, even the small portion sample i created exceeds the codeguru 2mb limit, even while zipped, so please download it at this link: http://rapidshare.com/files/39539835...oblem.rar.html

[HanneSThEGreaT]

The only reason I can see why the zip may be so big is because of the EXE files included in it, is that so ¿

Just remove the EXE files, and see if you can upload it then