Ogre Forums

c6burns wrote:

mmixLinus wrote:Personally, I do not believe "if you build it, they will come", if by "they" you mean "the masses".

I think I am misunderstood, so just to clarify. I do not think Ogre should go beyond being a renderer.

By "it" I mean a really great renderer that competes with commercial renderers in terms of performance. Not competes with commercial turnkey engines

By "they" I mean people with an interest in contributing to Ogre as a renderer, or people interested in creating associated tools projects that help out the community. I do NOT mean the masses.

I think you misunderstood my misunderstanding Sorry, I was a bit unclear. I was agreeing with you about Ogre being only a renderer, but disagreeing that making it a better renderer would bring in a lot of new people/users. But I see now what you mean.

Party on, Garth!

mmixLinus wrote:I think you misunderstood my misunderstanding

That's my specialty

mmixLinus wrote:Party on, Garth!

Excellent!

Is that really a good 'business model' for the longevity of Ogre though?

When I say that, I don't mean that Ogre needs to make money. But, should it bend with the times?

Before game engines were commonplace (not really that long ago) Ogre was a massive thriving community. If a question didn't have half a dozen responses within ten minutes of posting, either people didn't know the answer (which was highly unlikely) or the question was poorly worded and didn't make any sense.

People have moved away from the hardcore programming to crappy drag and drop programming.

I am working on an IDE myself for Ogre that should meet half way. If you guys are interested I should have something to show for it by the end of the year (being conservative here as I know how things blow out).

lonewolff wrote:

So my point is if you make Ogre an even nicer rendering engine you won't be enticing any masses to knock on your door. What you/we need is a project that puts the bits together for the developer. It will be an official Ogre project, in the sense that the Ogre team will be cooperating with the "Engine Team", and maybe even be part of it. The Engine team will put together Ogre3D, a 2D GUI, a Physics Engine, Water-and-Sky-and-Tree-and-the-Kitchen-Sink Engines and TOOLS in an attractive, cross-platform package that just builds. But it won't be called Ogre. (It might not even have Ogre in its name!)

And remember, despite how daunting a project like this may seem, the key is to start small.

100% my view on the big picture.

By the way, the closest existing project to what has been described above is called: Ogitor. Created and developed by team members, long time contributors, and others. Attractive (Qt interface), cross-platform package that just builds (existing CMake build system). Big thanks to spacegaier (and others) who is still actively maintain it ... I use it for my current project.

c6burns wrote:Big thanks to spacegaier (and others) who is still actively maintain it ... I use it for my current project.

"Active" is the overstatement of the year . Unfortunately, I rarely can find the time. But I definitely want to make another release right around the end of this year, because the current pre-built downloads are quite old (and still based on old Ogre and old Qt, although we have a branch where we already moved on). And perhaps I find time to tackle some bugs/features.

But as always: Every helping hand is welcome!

IMHO, there are a couple of changes that could increase interest in Ogre (with regards to the Topic at hand). They are within the realm of "Public Image".

Upon arriving at the main web page what does the budding developer see? And what is he/she looking for?

Looking for:

1. Does this lib have what I need?
2. Is it actively maintained? i know developers are misleading themselves with this question, after all a library that isn't maintained can still be very, very good. On the other hand, a lib being maintained is a sign that it will adapt, change, and become even better.

What does he/she see:

• The features list + API are good starting points for a "go/no go" decision.
• Almost all page area is taken up by odd news releases
• The news is sporadic, and pretty old
• Looking at Tools I see only a short list of things, and most of the dates are VERY old
• If we are lucky the developer will click "We Recommend" and see other interesting tools, but the list is not complete, and it isn't immediatley clear if Ogre + certain plugins/tools will do what I want
• if we are lucky the developer will look under "Addons" and see a long list of uncategorized "tools" without any links!

I think a homepage revamp has been discussed by some of you here, but I've been out of the loop. Anyway, I think a (simple) face lift would attract new users. Make it look "fresher". Maybe occasionally post news on current development (so it's visible on the FIRST page!) Make it clearer which tools are available, and which ones I need for my project.

(Note: In all this - Addons, Tools, We Recommend - where is Ogitor?? Ogitor looks GREAT! Just an example)

I would love to do some home page maintenance work myself, but honestly don't have the time right now. Please someone, own this work!

Just a summary of what people are saying:

Public Relations

• More news
  Site needs a face lift to be more modern
  Site content needs evaluating to ensure accurate / up-to date or flag for removal

Bindings

Having up-to date bindings for the major languages would help widen OGREs usage.

These are the major languages I think coding world wise/relevant outside of C++ (current versions added)

sorted alphabetically!

• C# - v1.7.4
  Java - v1.4
  Python - v1.7.1

Tooling

• Official import mechanism using a solid format
  Offical editors for ogre specific resources

(Sorry if I missed anything)

c6burns wrote:Sure you can grab up some decent subsystems from open source projects, but let me know when you have an answer for mechanim and animation graphing / the asset store / umbra occlusion culling / beast lightmapping.

Havok Animation is free and can probably match mechanim. It has animation retargetting, IK, animation compression, integration with havok physics for driving ragdolls, blend trees, state machines, ai control of animation properties, etc.
It has a full gui editor too.

Umbra is a bit harder. I don't know any free alternative, and Umbra costs a heap of cash normally. Unity also includes Substance, which costs a ton as well (Substance designer isn't too expensive, but the runtime code for game engines is in the 5 digit range).

Is there any material available for Umbra like papers so someone could write an own implementation as Ogre plugin?

// Edit
Actually, you get the idea here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1 ... hp?print=1
Would make a good GSOC if no patent is on it.

Zonder wrote:Just a summary of what people are saying:

Public Relations

• More news
  Site needs a face lift to be more modern
  Site content needs evaluating to ensure accurate / up-to date or flag for removal

Bindings

Having up-to date bindings for the major languages would help widen OGREs usage.

These are the major languages I think coding world wise/relevant outside of C++ (current versions added)

sorted alphabetically!

• C# - v1.7.4
  Java - v1.4
  Python - v1.7.1

Tooling

• Official import mechanism using a solid format
  Offical editors for ogre specific resources

(Sorry if I missed anything)

Setting up Ogre should be easier.

Kojack wrote:Havok Animation is free and can probably match mechanim

Oooo I didn't realize that was free ... on mobile platforms as well or just PC? The studio part or just the runtime SDK? I'll go check it out!

Anyway yeah ... that just leaves umbra and beast and likely more that I didn't think of off the top of my head (like Substance ... good call)

Not trying the be negative about the whole thing, just realistic. Personally I'd be happy just to see Ogitor get a few extra modules and maybe a few simple core tweaks to facilitate a basic sandbox. I actually started on a physics editor for Ogitor using bullet in a dedicated physics thread, with a message queue between render and physics threads. It was started and stopped by exposing the interface to angelscript and using scripts. I was developing it to allow non-technical level designers to work on physics dependent positioning without having to launch my actual runtime. Sadly, all my priorities ended up shifting and I had to make due another way and cut out all my tools work

I hope I have time at some point to come back to that, but it's doubtful. Prob the best I'll be able to do is just release everything in my runtime under MIT, but it's nothing special really. I need to make time to push some of my tweaks back into the projects they came from as well ... GLES2 updates for pagedgeometry, GLES2 updates and multithreaded noise gen for hydrax, and a few other goodies.

spacegaier wrote:

c6burns wrote:Big thanks to spacegaier (and others) who is still actively maintain it ... I use it for my current project.

"Active" is the overstatement of the year . Unfortunately, I rarely can find the time. But I definitely want to make another release right around the end of this year, because the current pre-built downloads are quite old (and still based on old Ogre and old Qt, although we have a branch where we already moved on). And perhaps I find time to tackle some bugs/features.

But as always: Every helping hand is welcome!

Geez, I'd be happy to take a look and see if I can help out

Where do I sign up?

lonewolff wrote:Where do I sign up?

In what regard? No official on-boarding required. Just clone Ogitor and start coding, Once you have something, create a pull-request. Basically, the same procedure was with Ogre as well.

Some links:
https://bitbucket.org/jacmoe/ogitor
http://tracker.ogitor.org/projects/ogitor
http://www.ogitor.org/wiki/Home

Nice one. Thanks I'll definitely check it out

** Updated **

Public Relations

• More news
  Site needs a face lift to be more modern
  Site content needs evaluating to ensure accurate / up-to date or flag for removal
  Setting up OGRE should be easy on all platforms

Bindings

Having up-to date bindings for the major languages would help widen OGREs usage.

These are the major languages I think coding world wise/relevant outside of C++ (current versions added)

sorted alphabetically!

• C# - v1.7.4
  Java - v1.4
  Python - v1.7.1

Tooling

• Official import mechanism using a solid format
  Offical editors for ogre specific resources

(Sorry if I missed anything)

Zonder wrote:Setting up OGRE should be easy on all platforms

You know, the bad thing is that I was working on an automated GUI download-build-and-install-Ogre tool, made in QT.
A 0.1 version of it was almost ready.
Then I lost all my data (it was the only and last time I ever worked without versioning...). And now I am too busy with our project and lectures that I just have no time for it - only if I wanted to spend all my remaining free time coding, too, which I don't

If I ever find the time to do it again (ask me in a year or two), I would use Haxe + OpenFL/HaxeUi, though. Much better idea for such a tool, Haxe is just super easy and effective to code with.

This thread actually triggered me to start coding again . Because the tool department is a a problem, I started with the development of a 3D IDE builder. Basically this is a wizzard that generates the GUI building blocks for a tool. It reads a template, which can visually be editted and depending on the selected builder it generates a gui project for Qt, wXWidgets, ... (i.e. dockable windows, menu's, toolboxes, node editors, Ogre controls, Gizmo's). A bit like Qt Creator, but specific for 3D tools. The generated gui project is a framework, the actual pieces are already put together, but from there you are on your own. At least this saves a lot of time and gives you a good start. Now find the time to actually finish it (you hear from me again in a couple of months... )

spookyboo wrote:This thread actually triggered me to start coding again .

And this thread actually triggered me to actually pick up the work on the facelifted http://www.ogre3d.org website again. I hopefully will not need as long as spookyboo though, although it might be only between the years that the new version goes online...let's see.

c6burns wrote:Oooo I didn't realize that was free ... on mobile platforms as well or just PC? The studio part or just the runtime SDK? I'll go check it out!

Havok Physics, Animation, the Animation Studio and the 3dsmax and maya exporters (graphics and physics) are all free for pc (if you use it commercially, you need to request a free license).
Project Anarchy is free for mobile (android, ios, tizen) and it includes Havok Physics, Animation, AI and the Vision Engine (full game engine).

One of my student game teams made their own dx11 gfx engine and used the Havok 3dsmax exporter to get meshes and collision data into their game.

Kojack, as always you are a wealth of knowledge. I didn't know about Project Anarchy at all ... very cool stuff.

Vision Engine is boss ... last time I looked at it was quite a while ago. They have Scaleform integration I got so spoiled by that in cryengine! Also Beast. This is worth looking into for me. It's a bummer there's no mac/linux support, but at least you have the option to license out for console platforms. Actually I don't care about linux support, but among the folks I know in the VC community most of them use mac

EDIT: nvm they just don't list mac on that page. If you bump up your license they do support mac.

Kojack wrote:

c6burns wrote:Oooo I didn't realize that was free ... on mobile platforms as well or just PC? The studio part or just the runtime SDK? I'll go check it out!

Havok Physics, Animation, the Animation Studio and the 3dsmax and maya exporters (graphics and physics) are all free for pc (if you use it commercially, you need to request a free license).
Project Anarchy is free for mobile (android, ios, tizen) and it includes Havok Physics, Animation, AI and the Vision Engine (full game engine).

One of my student game teams made their own dx11 gfx engine and used the Havok 3dsmax exporter to get meshes and collision data into their game.

It's soooo interesting to me that even though it's a younger product, Project Anarchy has like %1 of Unity's popularity, given that it nearly has everything that we all listed that Ogre lacks (world editor, art tools, lua scripting, rendering, complete physics modules, etc.)

spookyboo wrote:This thread actually triggered me to start coding again . Because the tool department is a a problem, I started with the development of a 3D IDE builder. Basically this is a wizzard that generates the GUI building blocks for a tool. It reads a template, which can visually be editted and depending on the selected builder it generates a gui project for Qt, wXWidgets, ... (i.e. dockable windows, menu's, toolboxes, node editors, Ogre controls, Gizmo's). A bit like Qt Creator, but specific for 3D tools. The generated gui project is a framework, the actual pieces are already put together, but from there you are on your own. At least this saves a lot of time and gives you a good start. Now find the time to actually finish it (you hear from me again in a couple of months... )

It actually started me back on to my Ogre oriented tool as well (and encouraged me to uninstall StarCraft II for the 97th time as well. Too distracting ).

I also noticed Kojack and I still have our Christmas avatars on. Are we early? Or have we been to lazy to change them back from years ago (I'm the latter - hehe!).

lonewolff wrote:I also noticed Kojack and I still have our Christmas avatars on. Are we early? Or have we been to lazy to change them back from years ago (I'm the latter - hehe!).

Yep, must be something like 3 years now since I edited my avatar. It's christmas every day here!
Maybe I should do it Max Gentleman style, extra hat each year.

my summary from this thread

1. lonewolff
   1. want to help Ogitor ....
   2. Gamemaker ogre3d implementation? where can i find?
2. spacegaier
   1. works on Ogitor webpage
   2. Ogitor3D ... update to ogre 2.0 release unknown
3. Kojack
   1. moved from ogre teaching to unreal engine
   2. ogre3d - Oculus integration
   3. Kage engine - open source?
4. dark_sylinc
   1. ogre 2.0 release unknown (1-2 years?)
5. unknown supporter of Ogre 2.0
   1. free Material Editor. not opensourced? QT? xxwidgets? C#? (release in 1-2 years?)
6. spookyboo
   1. 3D IDE builder .. (basic scaffolding) .. release in a year ...?
7. Thyrion
   1. working on an open source engine with bullet,Gorilla,sfml(thor input mapping),physfs,recast,sqllite(flatbuffers),ogre3d and WPF Editor(pinvoke interface with flatbuffer data and sfml commands), timeline till someone can work with it, if i'm not giving up 5-10 years ...

Ogre3d updates

1. C# Port ... wanted ... who makes it, maintains it?
2. adding support for the OpenGEX format.... who makes it? timeline 2-10 years?
3. new startpage, updated news .. who makes it?

Editor/extension alternatives:

1. Havok free c# winforms editor not open sourced. mainly for mobiles dev (DX9).
2. neoaxis. winforms editor (open source for $2800, with maybe 2 small updates per year)

because a life is to short, the switch to unreal engine should be easy .... but ....


btw: GSoC 2015 possible? isnt' it soon?

Thyrion may be right with his sad/cinic/realistic point of view...its a lot of code/time/effort...
All got cought up with the idea that OGRE should beat unity and reclaim the throne...

because a life is to short, the switch to unreal engine should be easy .... but ....

guess some folks just like to take the harder path...( more beautiful/interesting ? )

i think OGRE should do what it does( be the best c++ renderer with the coolest community ) but give more focus on few issues...
1)accessibility
2)ease of use
3)eco-system( aka: 3rd "PARTY" side developers )

pesonaly i would go first for the things that are easy to fix...
https://github.com/iauns/cpm

any other ideas that will make OGRE reshape itself without too much effort are welcomed...