SilverLaw

This is an example of a Silverlight 3 Shining Font Design. It is very simple to achieve a font apearence like this. All you need is three layers and one trick.

And here is a brief description on how to achieve this text effect: 

As layers use Textblocks converted to path elements. The front layer has z-index 0 and gets a linear gradient brush as fill. The two layers behind the front layer have z-index -1 and -2 respectively. The layer with z-index -1 gets a solid black color fill and compared to the front layer a position which is a little bit more up and right. The layer with z-index -2 gets a solid white color fill and compared to the z-index -1 layer a position which is a little bit more down and right. Use a Canvas as container for the three layers. To achieve the shining effect set the background of the canvas to no brush and add a DropShadowEffect to the canvas. This trick makes each of the children within the canvas shine instead of the canvas itself. This technique enables you to add other effects on each of three layers itself without loosing the DropShadowEffect which is responsible for the shining effect. It enables you to set a BlurEffect to the solid black color filled z-index -1 layer which makes the visual transition from the front layer to the white z-index -1 layer more smooth.

View the example and download the sourcecode at the Expression Gallery.

Shortly I will publish a short demo video on LawBot on Silverlight, my vimeo channel. 

Best regards,

M. (LawBot/SilverLaw)