winforms - Rotating a .NET panel in Windows Forms

Question

We use Windows Forms and custom user controls, and I would like to be able to rotate the panel hosting the userControl in a particular form. I have seen similar functionnalities with WPF, but I can't use it for the moment. Is it possible to achieve the rotation of a panel and its children using possibly built-in .NET methods or GDI+?

I have seen some pretty cool visual effect with menus that are displayed in game development, so I was wondering if it would be possible to create similar effects using Windows Forms.

Answer 1

You can use rotations in GDI+ by calling the RotateTransform method on a Graphics object.

However, rotating an entire control is not so simple, and will depend heavily on how the control is implemented.
If it's a composite UserControl that has other controls inside of it, you're out of luck.
If it's a sinlge control that paints itself, try inheriting the control, overriding the OnPaint method, and calling RotateTransform on the Graphics object. However, you will probably have trouble with it. In particular, you will probably need to override all of the mouse events and call the base control's events with rotated coordinates.