OgreKit *Update*: Bullet, Ogre, LUA, reading .blend

[ecoumans]

Please check out an early preview our open source gamekit efforts, with OgreKit previously mentioned in this artist topic.

OgreKit is based on Ogre 1.7 trunk, Bullet physics, LUA scripting and reading all data directly from Blender .blend files (next year also .fbx and .bullet)

Precompiled Windows and Mac OSX binaries, as well as full source code with cmake support are available here.
http://code.google.com/p/gamekit/

Happy Holidays!
Erwin

OgreKit.JPG (74.28 KiB) Viewed 24817 times

OgreKit2.JPG (6.42 KiB) Viewed 24817 times

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[jacmoe]

Really awesome stuff, Erwin!

Happy Holidays - and thanks for the Christmas present. Looking forward to checking it out.

[mkultra333]

Cool, and just when I was getting despondent about the the time it would take to add all this stuff myself! I'm still on 1.6.2 but I'll have to give this a try.

Any plans to add networking?

[calsmurf2904]

Also are you planning on adding support for the new terrain system in found in Ogre 1.7?

[ecoumans]

Any plans to add networking?

Yes, we look into that. Any libraries added to gamekit have to be open source and more importantly the license has to be BSD/MIT/Zlib style.

What kind of networking libraries can we use, aside from enet, with such license?

Also are you planning on adding support for the new terrain system in found in Ogre 1.7?

OgreKit can do everything that Ogre 1.7 can do, but in order to create a terrain from a .blend file, we will need to figure out how to recognize and convert Blender assets into terrain.

How can a terrain be authored / creating using Blender?
Cheers,
Erwin

[calsmurf2904]

I ment this terrain: http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=50674 (Fully featured in >= Ogre 1.7)

[ecoumans]

I ment this terrain: http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=50674 (Fully featured in >= Ogre 1.7)

I know you meant the new terrain feature.

It is a very long thread to read, is there information how to create such terrain using Blender (not using Ogitor)?

Can such terrain be created from an arbitrary 3d triangle mesh? Or does the triangle mesh have particular restrictions (does it have to be a 2D heightfield etc.)?
Would you be interested to help out creating such terrain, given the data from a .blend file?
Thanks,
Erwin

[madmarx]

Ecoumans wrote :

What kind of networking libraries can we use, aside from enet, with such license?

Before Enet, I used boost:asio. The licence is boost type, which I believe to be compatible with zlib/mit etc...

The new terrain system is IMO just a way to handle paging (and threading) in ogre in realtime. There is no predefined input format. The specialization is up to the programmer. In the thread, Sinbad gives an example of use of the terrain system, but there is nothing like a predefined format (can be 2D heightfield or not, can be a grid or a cube or a torus,...). To define these in blender, you will need to add and define specific custom data that will be specific to an application or a kind of application (for example you will need one specific format for a 2D grid heightfield). Anyway, I am personnally much more interested in some character control that blend bullet physics and predefined animations than the new terrain system (maybe you know where I can dig for more informations on this 'character controller' subject ?)

When you create your materials, you could modify by default the mipmap bias (try -0.5) on your textures, because it seems the littler mipmap levels are used too soon on your first screenshot.

Just my 2 cents.

[jacmoe]

The new terrain actually makes this a lot easier than the 'old' terrain, because you can create it from plain old arrays of floats (IIRC).
No need to set any world geometry or jazz like that.

[sinbad]

Great stuff Erwin.

The new terrain can be driven initially by a 2D heightmap with per-layer blend textures, diffuse, specular, normal & height texture inputs per layer and a few other parameters (layer tiling, material generator options). While you can drive it from raw inputs like this, most people save a 'compiled' data file out for optimal use which is what tends to be used at runtime. It's pretty much tailored to be integrated into a custom editor primarily because as you edit there are threads updating the derived data in real-time (like lightmaps) so you can save the compiled data out immediately - support from Blender might be tricky except for the lowest-common-denominator of a basic heightmap import.

[bharling]

This is really awesome erwin, thanks for tackling it!

I'm sure blender2.5 could be easily extended in python to easily generate an Ogre-friendly heightmap in realtime. The trick would be to make it as transparent as possible in the UI, but the new UI engine in 2.5 is vastly flexible just for this purpose

/EDIT/
I *think* you can also write arbitrary python data into your blend file ( might be wrong here ) through a script, so readblend could parse a custom ogre terrain format saved by an active UI script ?

[jntesteves]

Yes, we look into that. Any libraries added to gamekit have to be open source and more importantly the license has to be BSD/MIT/Zlib style.

I don't understand why people are so averse to LGPL. It worked nicely (even for proprietary projects) for years. All it demands is that you redistribute the source-code for the library itself.

Well, anyway, Grapple, from LGP, is a good net lib, but LGPL.
http://grapple.linuxgamepublishing.com/

apart from enet and grapple I don't know of any other good multi-platform lib for the task.

[jntesteves]

Oh, and i think it's great that you are porting this effort to Ogre now.
Will you fully switch or do you intent to keep an Irrlicht version for now?

Thank you for this great work. I really appreciate it.

[ShadeOgre]

Ahh, definitely what i wanted - I'll give it a try! keep up the good work!

[jacmoe]

Yes, we look into that. Any libraries added to gamekit have to be open source and more importantly the license has to be BSD/MIT/Zlib style.

I don't understand why people are so averse to LGPL. It worked nicely (even for proprietary projects) for years. All it demands is that you redistribute the source-code for the library itself..

Erwin is very adverse to copyleft licenses, just FYI.

[ecoumans]

I don't understand why people are so averse to LGPL. It worked nicely (even for proprietary projects) for years. All it demands is that you redistribute the source-code for the library itself..

Erwin is very adverse to copyleft licenses, just FYI.

(L)GPL and other copyleft licenses are fine for certain purposes, for example for 3D authoring tools such as Blender I don't see a problem.

For game middleware used at run-time, copyleft licenses are just not a good choice. Game developers often want to have full 'control' over their software as if it was their own, without any strings attached. They want to just use open source and mix it with proprietary software without copyleft hassle/requirement to release the source code. And some want to avoid dynamic linking when they can, for example GameKit links almost everything statically by default to avoid DLL hell.

Oh, and i think it's great that you are porting this effort to Ogre now. Will you fully switch or do you intent to keep an Irrlicht version for now?

We just added support for Ogre next to Irrlicht and Oolong Engine. So there is no 'switch' because supporting multiple graphics engines was a goal from the start.

We'll upgrade to the latest Ogre 1.7 RC1 soon and add the PlayPen test to experiment a bit with the new terrain.
Cheers!
Erwin

[pabloogre]

Hi all, this is my first post.
I have been reading about Ogrekit and I find it's amazing all it can do, but I would like to know how to use it and some extra information:
1)Are there tutorials or examples of how to use it?
2)Is this a API or SDK or a wrapper of Ogre + bullet?
3)Can I program it in C++?
4)I downloaded the source and i saw a folder called 'OgreLite'. What's that? A modified 1.7 version of Ogre?
5)I downloaded the compiled sample and it only has one exe but no dlls (I didn't see Ogre dlls for example). How can Ogre run without those dlls?

Thank you very much, and thanks to Erwin and your team for all your AWESOME work

[dudeabot]

1)Are there tutorials or examples of how to use it?

look for logicdemo project

2)Is this a API or SDK or a wrapper of Ogre + bullet?

everything? jk.. im not sure better wait for someone else to answer this one

Code: Select all

3)Can I program it in C++?

yes

5)I downloaded the compiled sample and it only has one exe but no dlls (I didn't see Ogre dlls for example). How can Ogre run without those dlls?

static linking

i didnt know how i miss this thread, now that i have downloaded and run it i found how this is really great =)

[ecoumans]

Several developers joined the OgreKit project, and it has made good progress.

A few new features:

• Directly reads both the Blender 2.49 and older as well as Blender 2.5x and newer .blend files
• Skinned animations are correctly converted directly from Blender .blend files
• Improved Blender logic brick support, nodal logic and Lua
• iPhone version works (in addition to Windows, Linux and Mac OSX)
• OpenAL sound with dynamic OpenAL detection (so runs without OpenAL installed)
• Integration with Recast, Detour and OpenSteer
• Improved integration with Blender 2.5x using the new Blender Addon system

You might want to try the precompiled Windows binaries or the source code with cmake support or ready-to-go Visual Studio project files:
http://gamekit.googlecode.com

[SomeFusion]

WOW this is really cool, looks like you make serious progress. Something really refreshing with the hundreds of dead open source projects out there.

[conallmmcg]

it would be great if there was some sort of forums for gamekit. have some sort of community, post tutorials,ask questions, code snippets and show off your work etc.
if i missed them im sorry lol.

[SomeFusion]

I have recorded a small video of the Logic Demo. This video is over at 2:30

[youtube]16qDBoyaQ1c[/youtube]

[ecoumans]

it would be great if there was some sort of forums for gamekit. have some sort of community, post tutorials,ask questions, code snippets and show off your work etc.
if i missed them im sorry lol.

There is no forum yet indeed. We'll create one soon, once we have a server at http://gamekit.org.

Thanks!
Erwin

[Beauty]

This is a very interesting project.

I think about to integrate it in my project.
But I don't want to use it as whole game engine. (no need of physics, sound, scripting)
I would like to create (static) scenes with Blender and load them by my Ogre (Mogre) application.
For example attach the loaded scene to the RootSceneNode.

Would this be possible?
(e.g. just using a loader script of the engine)

Are there some restrictions for the loaded data?
(e.g. is it possible to use it in combination with the Terrain Scene Manager?)



Nice would be if you create a wiki page about in the Ogre wiki.
(Yes, you have information in the wiki of the google code page, but common Ogre users search in the Ogre wiki. So an own wiki page with a project summary and links would be good.)

[mkultra333]

I'm watching this one too. I posted a thread recently seeking MIT or permisively licensed game engines, and your project looks like it fits the bill. At this stage I couldn't quite work out how complete the project was though. I'm looking at making a Q3A type game or first person shooter, I'm hoping you'll release a small demo game built with the engine that I can use as a template.