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.

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 available free (both 'free as in beer' and 'free as in speech') under the GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL (see Docs/licenses/lgpl.txt). By downloading and using the software, you are subject to these licensing conditions, so please read the license text carefully. The LGPL is compatible with almost all possible uses of the library (including commercial uses), but there are some responsibilities placed upon the user to maintain the freedom of the software for downstream users.

Alternatively, you may license OGRE under the OGRE Unrestricted License (OUL) which comes with fewer conditions than the LGPL. This license is commercial and basically allows you to pay for the privilege of side-stepping the responsibilities of the LGPL. The software in both cases is identical, only the licensing conditions vary. If you wish to discuss this option  please mail licensing@ogre3d.org for more details.

Licensing for 3rd-party libraries used in OGRE

Acknowledgements

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

Artwork:

• Matt Anderson at www.The3dStudio.com who kindly gave permission for the use of some textures. These textures 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.

• Jonathan Clark at http://www.jonathanclark.com for some Golgotha textures thet were released to the public domain.

• The 'Raptor Assault Gunboat' mesh & texture are © 2002 by Adrian 'cearny' Cearnau.

• The robot andn ninja mesh and animation are by Psionic, kindly made available from the CharacterFX site

• The 'Razor 2' mesh is by Dennis Verbeek

• Skyboxes in cubemapJS.zip are ©Johannes Schlorb, used with permission.

• Grass texture is courtesy of Mathias 'freezer' Walc

• 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.

• SoftImage|XSI sample media files (facial.mesh, jaiqua.mesh and associated files) are provided courtesy of Avid Technology, Inc.
  © 2004 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Avid is either a registered trademark or trademark of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

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

• Many of the maths/spatial routines are inspired by Dr D.H. Eberley, adapted from the 'free' parts of the Wild Magic engine 0.2 source provided with his book "3D Engine Design" (http://www.geometrictools.com/)

• Quake3 loading routines used a lot of information gleaned from Aftershock and Bart Sekura's ROGL

• Singleton template class is © Scott Bilas 2000 from Game Programming Gems

• Memory manager is based on MMGR © Paul Nettle at Fluid Studios

Standalone tools used:

• Document generation from C++ source code is by Doxygen © Dimitri van Heesch (http://www.doxygen.org)

• Milkshape3D for modelling & exporting (http://www.milkshape3d.com)

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

• Scott Meyers for his superb 'Effective C++' series

• Everybody who has ever written for Game Developer magazine, but particularly Chris Hecker and Jeff Lander whose work is consistently enlightening

• Michael Abrash for his 'Zen' books which inspired me to try graphics programming in the first place

• Everybody at SourceForge and VA Linux for providing fantastic facilities for developers with modest budgets

• Scott Adams (Dilbert) for providing a humourous distraction when I've had enough for the day
  

• My wife Marie for putting up with all this!