OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine)

SDK Distribution README file

http://www.ogre3d.org

Summary

OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine) is a scene-oriented, flexible 3D engine written in C++ designed to make it easier and more intuitive for developers to produce games and demos utilising 3D hardware. The class library abstracts all the details of using the underlying system libraries like Direct3D and OpenGL and provides an interface based on world objects and other intuitive classes.

This distribution contains the precompiled SDK release of OGRE and is the most convenient way of obtaining the engine. The full source code is also available, for people who want a little more flexibility or who are just curious as to the inner workings of the engine; go to the main OGRE web page for full details.

Index Of Contents

What's New?

A summary of the new and altered features in this release.

The OGRE Wiki

A gold mine of tutorials, tips and code snippets which will help you get up to speed with the engine. This is probably the best place to start learning OGRE.

The OGRE Manual

A descriptive reference to the major parts of the engine such as scripts.

API Reference

The full OGRE API documentation, as generated from the (heavily!) commented source.

Compiling the Samples

So, how do you go about compiling the samples? Firstly you need to set up your development environment.

Are you using Visual C++ 6 or Visual C++.Net 2002?
If so, you will need to use STLport, which is a standards-compliant version of the C++ Standard Template Library (STL); unfortunately versions of the STL which shipped with versions of Visual C++ before .Net 2003 are not standards compliant. The OGRE project provides a precompiled version of STLport which will work with VC6 and VC.Net 2002; go to the downloads area to get it and install it in the folder of your choice. After installing:
  1. Load the Samples.dsw (VC6) or Samples.sln (VC7) file
  2. Open Microsoft Visual C++ and select Tools | Options... from the menu bar to bring up the options dialog
  3. Go to the include folders list: in VC6 this is on the 'Directories' tab, in VC++.Net it is under Projects|VC++ Directories in the tree on the left
  4. Insert the directory <path_to_STLport-x.x.x>\stlport is at the TOP of your include folders list. Crucially, it MUST be above all Microsoft include folders.
  5. Insert the directory <path_to_STLport-x.x.x>\lib into your library folder list.
Once you have your development environment configured, just perform a Batch Build of the solution / workspace to build all the samples.

Keeping Up To Date

The best place to keep up to date with developments on OGRE is the Official Web Site. From there you can download the latest source code and documentation. You can choose between keeping bang up to date with CVS (Concurrent Versioning System) or by just getting the regularly released snapshots.

The changes included in this current version can be viewed on the ChangeLog.

Getting Support

Please use our extensive forums if you need help or think you may have found a bug. Go to the main web site and click on the Forums link.

Licensing

OGRE is distributed as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License (see License.html). In summary this means that you can use OGRE for any purpose, provided that if you make changes to OGRE itself, you must release the changes back into into the public domain under the LGPL and make it clear where you have made the changes. Your own application can be distributed under any license you like. Note that in the case of OGRE, inlining and macros in headers are used purely for performance or platform independence reasons, and including any of OGRE's headers in your projects does not result in a derived work.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA, or go to http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.txt.

In addition, if you use Ogre it would be nice if you displayed the Ogre logo somewhere in your application (start up or shutdown) for a minimum of 2 seconds. This splash-screen is displayed on the standard Ogre configuration dialog anyway, so if you use that you don't need to do anything extra. The logo is included in the download archive as Examples\Resources\ogrelogo.png.

Some textures distrubuted with Ogre are used with permission of www.The3dStudio.com and may not be re-distributed, sold, or given away except in the form of rendered images, animations, or real time 3D applications when credit is given to www.The3dStudio.com.

The 'Han Solo' TrueType font is © 2000 by Iconian Fonts - Daniel Zadorozny. This font may be freely distributed and is free for all non-commercial uses. This font is e-mailware; that is, if you like it, please e-mail the author at: iconian@aol.com.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to credit the following for their work which is used in whole or in part in OGRE:

Artwork:

Included as source (modified as appropriate), and credited appropriately in the source files affected:

Source not modified, but linked in as part of the complete OGRE system:

Standalone tools used:

And I'd also like to thank the following just for inspiration, ideas, and pretty much anything else:

Copyright © 2005 by The OGRE Team