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2D images to 3D view

I need to be able to generate a 3D perspective from a bunch of 2D images of a pipe.
Basically... We have written software that interprets combined data from laser and sonar units to give us an image slice from a section of pipe. These units travel through the pipe and scan the inside of the pipe every 100mm.
All of this is working great. My client now wants to take all these 2D image slices and generate a 3D view so they can "travel" through the pipe looking at defects etc.. that are picked up by the scans. We can see the defects in the 2D images but there can be hundreds of images in a single inspection - hence the requirement to be able to look through the pipe.
I am doing this in VS2010 on the .NET 4 platform in C#.
I am honestly clueless as to where to start here. I am not a graphics developer so this is all new territory to me. I see it as a great challenge but need some help kicking off - and a bit of direction.
Any help appreciated :)
Mike

Well, every 10cm isn't very detailed.. However, you need to scan the pixels of the pipe, creating a list of closed polygons, then just use a trianglestrip to connect one set to the next, all the way down the pipe.

Try to start with very basic 2d instead of full blown 3d rendering - may be good enough. Pipe when you look at it from inside can be represented as several trapeze. Assuming your images are small cylinder portions of a pipe - map each stripe to trapezoids (4 would be good start - easy to position) and draw than in circular pattern. You may draw several stripes this way at the same time. To move back/forward - just reassign images to trapezoids.
If you need full 3d - consider if WPF would work, if not - XNA or some OpenGL library will give you full 3d.

You don't specify the context, 100mm sample intervals may be sparse (a 1m pipe) or detailed (10km pipe). Nor do you specify how many sample points there are (number of cross sections and size of cross section image).
A simple way to show the data is to use voxels where each pixel on a cross section is treated as a cube and adjacent samples form adjacent cubes (think Minecraft). The result will look blocky but as it's an engineering / scientific application this is probably preferable. Interpolating the model to produce a smooth surface may hide defects or make areas appear to be defective. Also, rendering a cross section through a voxel is a bit easier than a polygon surface.

Shopping Mall Map Directory Editing [closed]

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I have a shopping mall directory image (for example like this: http://www.westfield.com/annapolis/map/ ) and want to make an application like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNj8D8JKv-4&feature=related where I can draw the path between two locations without needing make many images for the paths.
So, What techniques (Library, programming techniques, softwares .. etc) do you suggest to do this using .NET (Windows Forms/ WPF) application?
EDIT for BOUNTY
I am looking for some start like. I am on 3rd Floor. I have a image of third floor. There is a point of entrance from 3rd floor in map. There are 29 seats in the floor. I want to show with line path, where is somebody's seat. I want to do it through Web App. C# MVC 4.5 Where should I start from ? Any sample code will be very helpful.

I solved similar problem some time ago. In short, I was making a game like Heroes of Might and Magic and since I didn't want to draw background myself I decided to use a static image which I would simply manipulate along with player moves.
So we found an open-source game with a map editor that we used for creating of a map background. Then we created a mapper that would load an image created from the map editor and user would mark places on a grid. The following image is a screenshot from our map mapper.
There was the image, and drawed grid with adjustable size for cells so that we could map objects very precisely. The yellow boxes with an item inside are mapped objects (some of them actually do not give a sense, it is just a proof of concept). When we were content of the result, we would safe position and information about all obejcts to a xml file so that I can be used from our game application.
In our game we have defined a class called TileMap that was aware of all objects (stored as instances of a class Tile) on the map and all players move requests were permitted or forbidden by it.
Finally, this is how I would solve your problem. I have only positive experience with this solution. Create an application that would allow to you to specify where there is a path, where there is a store and how it is called, and so forth. Serialize values to xml or another format you are confident with. Then, create an application that works with these obejcts, define a tile map and you are nearly finished. Now you just need to implement path finding and drawing. Path finding is easy, there are plenty different algorithms with different efficiency and speed. Once you know what tiles you have to cross in order to get into a destination, simply draw stars, arrows or whatever you like above the tiles.
Cons
you need to create two applications
Pros
no need to generate more images, you are drawing on a transparent layer and you can safe already generated paths in memory or file
quite easy implementation, just a lot of code
feel free to choose a technology - we used WinRT, but WPF and even WinForms are also suitable
if you like GUI applications, you will have a plenty of fun while doing this :)
Feel free to ask any design and even implementation details questions .

Prepare the list of all places that you want to be searchable. Give each one an ID. The stairs and elevators should have IDs too.
Create the map floor masks. The easy way is the "coloring book" technique. Create semi-transparent layer in Photoshop and overlay it above the map. Then, draw the walls with some set "color 1". Then, draw each distinct place with a distinct color. Just convert the place ID to Hex and use that hex value as the color. Draw the mask for each floor (in a separate image).
Create the map loader. It should load the mask images and extract the object position and passing ability information. You have to find the position (x, y, floor) of each place by scanning the maps and looking at the pixel color hex value. You have to locate the stairs and elevators, their positions and the floors that they connect.
Implement the pathfinding algorithm like A*. It's quite easy and looks like viscous water flowing to the destination's low point. For each position (x, y, floor) one can move in any of the four directions where there aren't walls. And if there is an elevator at that point, one can move to some other floor. The algorithm can quickly find the best route between any two (x, y, floor) points.
When user gives you the name of the place where he wants to go, you need to find out the user's position coordinates (you may try to use GPS) and the destination position (use the object location table, you prepared when you loaded the map on step 3). Give these two (x, y, floor) points to the pathfinding algorithm to get back the route - the sequence of the (x, y, floor) points leading to the destination.
Analyze the route. You need to scan the route and find out what floors does it pass through. Split the route in chunks where each chunk belongs to a single floor. Now you have a list of floors and the route points for each of the floors.
Visualize the floors and their route parts by drawing the route points over the floor maps. To increase the root point spacing, you may just draw every 10th point or so. With HTML5, the sequence of route points can be drawn as an SVG or canvas overlay on top of the floor map image background.

The best way to set up something like this is to pick up a book on game programming, as it will give you a lot of information on setting up paths around "solid objects". The actual UI technology should not matter as much, so choose WPF or Windows Forms, HTML5 etc. Of the choices you have, I would probably aim for WPF or Silverlight, as it gives you much more flexibility on creating the UI. But I would not be adverse to HTML5 either.

You can definately do the whole thing in WPF, you're looking at drawing simple paths so you need to chunk your project into multiple sub issues:
1) How to draw the UI area (i assume you already know that)
2) How to draw the map, it heavily depends on the map data you have but it could be as simple as a single image, please add more detail for your source
3) How to figure out the path, for this you will need to use some form of pathfinding algorithm (one of the simplest one is A*, but there is a myriad of algorithms for different needs)
4) How to draw the Path, this depends on what you're looking for once again
I know it isn't much of an answer yet but depending on your needs (please add a comment bellow) i'll edit it to help you the best i can.

It would be pretty significant undertaking if you are trying to do this whole thing by yourself. All you have is image of shopping mall. From there you need to convert it in to vector data which in itself a fairly significant project. Then you will need to design navigation algorithms and then you need to setup UX for the whole thing. IMO, all these would require a lot of resources and research if you want to do this nicely and accurately.
Fortunately here is a good news: Google has been trying to do same thing for quite sometime and throwing lot more resources than that are likely at your disposal. Their effort is called "indoor mapping" which you can pretty much leverage out-of-box for your scenario. I'm going to give out here pointers to start you off as you have asked.
First visit Google blog to get familiarize with their indoor maps initiative. Then try out adding your floor plan in Google maps here. You are basically uploading image and aligning with the building in Google maps at this point. Here's another tutorial. Note that this does not make your floor plan navigable and may not show yet users location on it because to do that you need data from wifi/cell towers to triangulate users location on floor plan. We'll go over that next. If you have tons of these floor plans, I'd suggest taking help of mechanical turk or such service to have other humans do it for you cheaply. Google maps allows you to keep floor plan privates by using overlays but likely you don't want to do that so users can access it from anywhere.
Next, you want to make your user locatable on your floor plan. This involves getting data such as wifi/cell tower signals at different points on your floor plan. Google has app for this. And here's little demo. You can also use SketchUp to add vector data and polygons.
Next, you want to embed Google maps in your app so it becomes integral part of your app instead of users having to go through Google Maps website. To do this look at Maps SDK (here's link for iOS, and snippet for indoor maps).
Good luck!

You may easier this job by looking into Google map indoor solution. http://maps.google.com/help/maps/indoormaps/
No programming except a web page is needed.

Any Silverlight-based Thumbstick controls out there?

I'm trying to implement a simple game - I've written a dial control but having trouble writing a on-screen thumbstick in Silverlight for Windows Phone - this would be a large circle - say 150px wide with a 25px circle which when held down moves round the centre much like a real thumbstick - like the Xbox 360 controller thumbsticks.
I'm finding creating this a little tricky - if there are any examples such as a Joystick one I can shrink down for example? Been trying to create something for ages and can't seem to figure it out - the centre circle is loaded from an Image and the Larger one too so it can be customised - getting the two to be within each other centred is the easy part!

As discussed, i'd suggest using XNA doing it since its considerably easier to do. With Mango you could combine XNA and Silverlight and therefore satisfy your needs for some Silverlight too.
Look at this example:
http://create.msdn.com/en-US/sample/touchthumbsticks
It shows how to easily create a thumbstick control. To restrict the area which you can touch, just create a new Rectangle at the position of the thumbstick with the size you desire and use the .Contains(...) overload to check if the position of the tap is inside it and then act accordingly (update the stick, or ignore input).
Check out the .Contains(...) function and its overloads:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/microsoft.xna.framework.rectangle.contains.aspx
I have learned that many programmers tend to stick to Silverlight for they think XNA is some kind of holy grail and is complex to program. It is not. It just needs a bit of getting used to, but you will surely enjoy the ride to XNA enlightment. I can tell, i did :) It's fun! Just trust a stranger on the internet!
If you need to stick to Silverlight and Pre-Mango, i fear i can offer nothing of value for you, and i fear you will suffer pain in trying to recreate the same functionality XNA already offers programmers for no charge.

Simple 3D Graphics in C#

I'm currently working on an application where I need to do some visualization, and the most complicated thing I'll be doing is displaying point-like objects.
Anything beyond that is complete overkill for my purposes, since I won't be doing anything but drawing point-like objects.
That being said, what would be the simplest solution to my needs?

The simplest is probably to use WPF 3D. This is a retained mode graphics system, so if you don't have huge needs (ie: special shaders for effects, etc), it's very easy to setup and use directly.
Otherwise, a more elaborate 3D system, such as XNA, may be more appropriate. This will be more work to setup, but give you much more control.

I recommend you take a look on Microsoft XNA for C#

Are they to be rendered as true points or as spheres? (where you see the 'points' that are closer using the visible size of the sphere as a reference.) In the former case, I would recommend simply multiplying the appropriate transformation matrices yourself to project the points to your viewing plane, rather than using a full-blown 3D engine (as you're not rendering any triangles or performing lighting/shading)
For some theoretical background on 3D projection to a 2D plane, see this Wiki article. If you use XNA, it has Matrix helper functions that generate the appropriate transformation matrices for you, even if you don't use it for any actual rendering. The problem becomes very trivial for points, as there are no normals to consider. You simply multiply the composed View Projection matrix by each point, clip any points that lie outside the viewing frustrum (i.e. behind the viewing plane, too far away, or outside the 2d range of your viewport) and render the points in X,Y. The calculation does you give feedback as to how 'deep' each point is relative to your viewing plane, so you could use this to scale or color the points appropriately, as otherwise it's very difficult to quickly understand the 3d placement of the points.

What is the best way to implement scrollable maps (like Google Maps) in Microsoft Silverlight?

Problem Overview
I am working on a game application and need to be able to implement scrollable maps in Silverlight similar to those found in Google Maps. However, I am unsure as to how to implement this effectively. The following paragraphs provide much additional detail. Any ideas or guidance is greatly appreciated!
Problem Detail
I have been working on a new MMOG (massively multi-player online game). The game will implement a coordinate (x,y) based map. Only a very small fraction (less than 0.1%) of the map will be displayed on the screen at any given time. The player should have the ability to click on the map and drag the mouse to scroll and view map areas which are not presently visible. (This is somewhat similar to Google Maps.)
The map background is made up of a series of stitched (repeating) images. These images are woven together to give the basic appearance of the game's "world". A standard set of additional graphics are then superimposed, as appropriate, on each of the coordinate locations . For example, point (0,0) might be a lake, (0,1) might be a city, and (0,2) might be a forest. The respective images for a lake, a city, and a forest would be superimposed on the background.
It is important to mention that the entire map is NOT stored on the local client machine. Rather, as a player scrolls to or opens a specific location, the appropriate map information is retrieved from the remote game server. It is infeasible for us to build the entire game world map ahead of time due to its size and the fact that portions of the map are constantly changing.
I have toyed with the idea of building a bitmap on-the-fly of the new map each time a player moves. However, I think there may be a much better way to add to the map as the player scrolls.
When scrolling, movement of the map should not, if possible, result in a "flickered" refresh of the screen. I believe recreating a bitmap each and every time a player moves even one or two pixels would almost certainly result in flicker.
I am open to 3rd party tools and solutions. However, to the degree possible, I would prefer to use standard Microsoft libraries or open source tools rather than commercial tools.
What are some ideas as to the best way to implement this functionality so that it performs well, is reliable, and transitions to new areas of the map appear seamless to the player?
Thank you in advance for all your help!
Update
Here are a few pieces of additional information that may prove helpful.
Since my initial post, I have been introduced to the concept of a "tile engine". (Many thanks to Michael and Paul for pointing me towards Bing and BruTile.)
My understanding is that a tile engine basically breaks larger images into sections and renders them side by side. As a user scrolls, additional tiles are rendered as others are removed from view. This is very much what I am looking for.
However, there may be a couple of wrinkles that affect my use of a standard tile engine. All of the graphics for the game, including the backgrounds which would be displayed on any tile, will already be downloaded on the client. It is important that the tile engine not retrieve the graphics from a server as this would consume significant unnecessary bandwidth.
Other graphics (e.g. a lake, forest, hill), which represent objects from the gameworld, must be superimposed when the tiles are rendered on the screen. Tile engines such as Bing appear to provide the ability to superimpose custom images. Whatever tile engine is used must not only support this feature but allow exact placement of these superimposed images.
Finally, there is a a requirement to support popup descriptions when the user mouses over one of the superimposed graphics. Unlike the graphics which are already stored on the client, the descriptions contain information which must be downloaded from the game server. BruTile, while excellent in many ways, does not appear to yet support these popup descriptions.
We are making great progress. Thanks for all your help so far!

For an open source solution you could look at BruTile. It too has all the features you describe. It can also be used on the Microsoft Surface and on Windows Phone (for your markeplace version).

Use the Bing Maps control or the MultiScaleImage (Deep Zoom) which it uses.
To seen an example, go here. You can use the Deep Zoom Composer to create maps or topologies using your own photos and images.
Here is the SDK for the control.