Ogre Overview

Ogre 3D is a software library that can be used to develop sophisticated real-time 3D graphics applications including video games, flight simulators, and scientific visualizations. By itself Ogre 3D is not a game engine, but it can be used for this purpose when combined with other sound, networking, and physics libraries. Ogre provides a level of abstraction above a software package like OpenGL and it is written to be independent of any lower level graphics library. Since this is a class about graphics, we focus on Ogre's rendering ability. It has a object-oriented, plugin architecture and implements many of the algorithms we have discussed in class presentations.

There is a wealth of documentation available online for Ogre 3D. First go to the home page for the Ogre 3D SDK:

Feel free to browse around the website and learn about the available resources for Ogre 3D. In particular, notice that under the Documentation menu option there is an online reference for the API, an online manual for Ogre, and an Ogre Wiki. There is also an excellent book for Ogre called Pro OGRE 3D Programming by Gregory Junker. Finally, there is an active Ogre forum that is accessible from the Ogre Wiki.

Project Goals

The goal of this project is to introduce you to Ogre, as a concrete example of how a real game engine may be structured and how some important real-time rendering algorithms are implemented. The project involves a series of steps outlined below. Got through these steps

Part 1: Study Ogre's Architecture

First you need a more comprehensive overview of what Ogre is, and how it is structured. Study the following slides for a quick overview:

Part 2: Ogre Installation

Get and install the Ogre SDK. You can find help for this at:

Part 3: Go through Basic Tutorials 1-4,6 and 8

Go through Basic Tutorials 1-4,6 and 8. As you work your way through the tutorials we would like you to take a few pictures and/or make a few minor modifications to the code and document the results:

• 1st Tutorial - Take a screen shot of three Ogre heads facing each other with each head a different size.
• 2nd Tutorial - Take a screen shot of the Ninja in the basic scene with four lights on him; one from the front, back, left side and right side. The lights may be any color but the shadow type should be SHADOWTYPE_STENCIL_MODULATIVE.
• 3rd Tutorial - Take one screen shot of the edge of a skyplane, and one screen shot of a skydome.
• 4th Tutorial - Take a screen shot of a scene with two or more Ninjas in it and more than two light sources turned on. All of the light sources should toggle on and off with a specific key press (you may need multiple screen shots to prove this). Also, the Ninjas should be movable based on a specific key input.
• 8th Tutorial - Take a screen shot of a scene where the dual viewport feature is used to look at an object, like a penguin, from 2 different angles.

More details on how to capture screenshots in Ogre are provided the appendix below.

Part 4: Study how to use with shaders with Ogre

Read the following article.

What are your impressions? Is it easy or hard to work with shaders in Ogre? Why?

Part 5: Most valuable third party tools

Ogre also works with several third party libraries, most of which are listed here:

Explore these third party libraries. List your three favorite ones and in each case write a paragraph on why you liked it.

Submitting Your Homework

Create a Word document containing all your screenshots requested, reviews and answers all questions asked in the homework. Simply email me this file in Word before class time on the due date.

Appendix: How to set configure Ogre for screen shots

• When you run your application you are given a screen for rendering options. Once you have chosen OpenGL look down and find the option for full screen mode
  
  
• Once you have found that option go down to the bottom drop down menu and choose the option “No”
  
  
• Click “OK” and you should now see your ogre application running in a smaller windowed mode that you have the freedom to resize and move around the screen. Also the regular screen shot will now capture an image of your ogre application.