What can Ogre really do? (and other questions...)

Anything and everything that's related to OGRE or the wider graphics field that doesn't fit into the other forums.
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Clean3d
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What can Ogre really do? (and other questions...)

Post by Clean3d »

WARNING: BIG POST AHEAD.

Hello to all, this is my first post! :)

I'm learning to program C, hopefully soon I'll go to C++. I've been using Blender for a few years and have done quite a bit of work with it. In fact, you may recognize me from any of these forums:

www.elysiun.com Name: Clean3d
www.blenderwars.com Name: 3dentity
www.gameblender.org Name: Clean3d

You can see my WIP game here:
http://www.gameblender.org/modules/newb ... =9&start=0

But I am using Blender's game engine no more. Too slow, few options, etc. I'm still going to use it for modelling and stuff, though. I'm using the Gimp for texturing, Wings3d for some modelling.

I'm also planning to combine these Open-Source Libraries to make my game:

www.ogre3d.org // Graphics (duh)
www.openal.org // Audio
www.ode.org // Physics
http://www.hawksoft.com/hawknl/ //Networking

My thoughts and questions go as follows:

Ok, I want to use Ogre for graphics, how good can I make my graphics? I've heard it bragged that Ogre can do graphics as good as Unreal 3 engine depending on the artist. So let's say that I make a character that looks like one right out of Unreal 3, will Ogre handle it? And if so, how fast will it run? I would kind of like good framerates as well as good graphics.

I'm also in the process of building my own computer, what kind of a graphics card do I need to get to support these "pixel-shaders" and things such as bump mapping, specularity channels, etc? If I'm going to learn C and C++ to be able to use Ogre, I want to be able to use it to the max!

I've also got a few questions concerning "OgreOde". Is this a different project than Ogre that I need to download and compile? Or is it just a way of saying that I'm using Ogre and Ode together (somehow) to create my game?

Also, how capable is Ode for physics? Can I create physics like those in Star Wars: Jedi Outcast? I'm fairly sure that it can beat Blender's game engine physics, but can I do things like shoot underneath an enemy's arm? Or do I have to put up with using a box for collision detection?

My thanks in advance! :)
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Olex
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Post by Olex »

The graphics are totally up to you. OGRE indeed provides advanced techniques to allow you make your graphics out of this world. The quality of your models and textures will determine that.

Now, maybe OGRE will not handle some VERY specific features, like making sure that the edges of the triangles get correct sampling from textures from neighboring triangles, etc., but this stuff is REALLY specific, barely any engine handles that, so OGRE is not perfect (like anything else), but it will give you more than you can chew for a while.

As far as ODE goes, from my personal development experience, it is a decent and robust engine, just take a look at the list of its users on http://ode.org/users.html. Besides, Stalker http://www.stalker-game.com/ uses ODE, too. So, it should be good enough for you. Expect some time setting it up to make work like you want it to, though, if you have not worked with a similar engine beforehand.

Take a look at OgreRefApp namespaces for samples how to tie up OGRE and ODE, or maybe even OGREODE.
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muppet
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Post by muppet »

Ok, I want to use Ogre for graphics, how good can I make my graphics? I've heard it bragged that Ogre can do graphics as good as Unreal 3 engine depending on the artist. So let's say that I make a character that looks like one right out of Unreal 3, will Ogre handle it? And if so, how fast will it run? I would kind of like good framerates as well as good graphics.
Ogre is as good as the hardware that you run it on. I mean polygon count these days is really not that much of an issue (obviously within reason), its all to do with fill rate. Most modern cards can handle several 100k polys on the screen at any one time and so the frame rate you will get will mainly be based upon the what sort of fill rate the card can deal. As for unreal 3, then if you have, say, one of the better geforce 6 card about, then there is no reason why you wouldnt be able to produce someting near to that standard using Ogre.
I'm also in the process of building my own computer, what kind of a graphics card do I need to get to support these "pixel-shaders" and things such as bump mapping, specularity channels, etc? If I'm going to learn C and C++ to be able to use Ogre, I want to be able to use it to the max!
All modern graphics card (by this i mean geforce and ati) support pixel shaders to some extend, but obviously the better the card, the greater the number of card extensions available. This therefore means the greater the functionality available to you as programmer when writing your vertex and fragment programs

I've also got a few questions concerning "OgreOde". Is this a different project than Ogre that I need to download and compile? Or is it just a way of saying that I'm using Ogre and Ode together (somehow) to create my game?
OgreOde is a wrapper written by Monster to provide a simple interface between Ogre and Ode. Therefore integrating ode based physics into your game is made much simpler. You do have download and install this seperately and it can be found at:

http://www.green-eyed-monster.com/xoops ... downloads/
Also, how capable is Ode for physics?
Ode is very capable physics engine that is mainly oriented towards rigid body dynamics as opposed to just simple collision detection.

Can I create physics like those in Star Wars: Jedi Outcast?
Don't know sorry havent played it, although I would very much suspect so.
can I do things like shoot underneath an enemy's arm? Or do I have to put up with using a box for collision detection?
In most cases bounding boxes around individual limbs is possible, and is probably about as accurate as you could reasonably expect. This in turn can be used to create ragdoll physics, as exemplified in the OgreOde demo (download link above). You could also look into using trimesh support for this area, although it is known to have problems atm when used to create dynamic objects.

Hope this helps you a bit

thanks

Muppet
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Post by SpannerMan »

Hi Clean3d,

First of all, welcome to OGRE and the best of luck with your project.

Concerning your questions about using the OGRE engine for your game, the fact is that you're in the right place. Judging by the other libraries you listed, I reckon that "free" is a major factor here. As far as free graphics libraries go, OGRE simply can not be beaten. Obviously, there are many other great advantages to OGRE, but you probably know all that by now.

Really I just wanted to suggest that perhaps you should consider joining up with other programmer/s. I didn't see any mention in your Blender forum posts of working with anyone else on this game of yours, and I’m guessing that you probably want to go solo anyway. The thing is - you say that you still need to learn C++ and I think that trying to get to grips with the advanced portions of a rather large engine like OGRE is going to be a very long, steeply learned process.

I really don't wish to discourage you; on the contrary I think you should combine your artistic skills and game design/ideas with the coding skills of a programmer to give your game a smoother and faster rate of growth. In addition you can be learning from the other coders how to code yourself as the game gets developed.

If you already know/considered this, then I apologise, but I thought I should mention that learning C++ and then all these libraries is no small task. From the amount of work you have already done, you obviously have a lot of drive and determination, and you'll need lots of that. Again, all the best of luck.
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Post by Vectrex »

I don't agree that Ogre could produce Unreal 3 gfx. That's like saying POV ray could do it, sure it could at 0.001 fps :) Ogre has no native support for many visibility techniques yet. They are being worked on but I think they should be officially worked on (like portals/zoning, HW occlusion etc) as they are needed for all gfx apps not just games. Plus other things in Unreal like using real geometry for skyboxes etc make a big difference and many optimisation techniques for the combined bsp/terrain help. But $500,000 vs $0 is pretty convincing to me :)
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Post by monster »

I don't agree that Ogre could produce Unreal 3 gfx ... Ogre has no native support for many visibility techniques yet.
That's not the same thing. Ogre has support for all the graphical techniques that <insert recent game> uses, so if you can provide comparable artwork then Ogre can display them. If you want to create a full game utilising that graphics rendering power then you will be responsible for implementing everything that a game needs over and above just rendering graphics. Most likely that will include some specialised scene management system, which will probably be dependent on exactly what kind of game you're creating.
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Post by :wumpus: »

Vectrex wrote:Ogre has no native support for many visibility techniques yet. They are being worked on but I think they should be officially worked on (like portals/zoning, HW occlusion etc)
People are using Ogre with these techniques, the problem is that noone released the source yet :(
Plus other things in Unreal like using real geometry for skyboxes etc
Ogre uses real geometry for skyboxes as well. Look at the setSkyBox/SkyPlane/SkyDome function, it builds geometry. Honestly I don't see how you could do those without geometry.
The setSky??? are only there for convience. If you want your custom sky geometry, load geometry and add it to the sky renderqueue.
make a big difference and many optimisation techniques for the combined bsp/terrain help. But $500,000 vs $0 is pretty convincing to me :)
In fact, most applications don't need BSP at all, it's a unwieldy format that was really optmized for cards of 10 years ago when every rendered poly still counted.
It's better to chunk your geometry and use a standard issue octree these days, which is already possible with something like DotScene converter.
This also makes portals a lot less interesting, as everything can be done within Ogre's scene graph. But I agree a standarized portal scene manager would be very nice in some cases.
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Post by tuan kuranes »

Code: Select all

 noone released the source yet 
Hey, and my terrain Horizon Culling technique ?

In fact if you use terrain, many techniques are not in those $500,000 things.

Terrain is pretty late on those 3d engines... no big landscapes, no deformation, no old hardware support, no vertex compression, etc...

I've ideas to make it even bettter. What I need is time... (or perhaps change to a 500.000 $ license ;) that would make me buy time.)
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Post by Clean3d »

Thanks for the replies! I've always been very impressed with the Ogre community over here and the amount of replys an Ogre newbie like me can get. Thank you! :)

Spannerman, there is no need to apologize. When someone makes a post like that, I don't say, "Yeah, I've already thought of that." I say, "You nailed it! That's exactly where I'm at!"

Free is a huge factor in the development of this game. I doubt I'm using a piece of software right now that's not free. So if anybody has any suggestions concerning these free libraries (i.e. the ones I chose aren't good enough, there are better ones that are free, etc.) I'd be glad to have your input.
:wampus:: In fact, most applications don't need BSP at all, it's a unwieldy format that was really optmized for cards of 10 years ago when every rendered poly still counted.
So can I use Blender to make my levels? Exporting them to an ogre format?

BTW, I'm not really planning to alter the core engine itself. Just compile and go, if that's possible.

Thanks once again for all the help!
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Post by haffax »

Clean3D, yes you can use Blender to create your levels. You need reimpell's blender exporter and dotscene exporter. And either parse dotscene yourself, or use the dotsceneoctree-scenemanager.
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