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<p align="center" class="header">OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics
Rendering Engine)</p>
<p align="center" class="header">Change Log</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.13.0 (18 January 2004) - Major
Release<br>
</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.12.3:<br>
</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Major
material upgrade</span>! This is a subsection of it's own..</li>
<ul>
<li>Support for <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">vertex and
fragment programs</span> (shaders), including:</li>
<ul>
<li><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Low-level assembler
programs</span> under D3D9 (vs_1_1, vs_2_x, ps_1_x, ps_2_x) and GL
(NV_texture_shader, NV_register_combiners, arbvp1, arbfp1,
ATI_fragment_shader)</li>
<li><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">High-level program
support</span> via plugins, so far we support Cg and D3D9 HLSL. Cg
compiles down to D3D and GL assembler, and includes converters to
non-assembler formats including NV_register_combiners and
ATI_fragment_shader so you can write a single program for all targets.</li>
<li>Support for automatically updated parameter bindings such as
'object space camera position', 'object space light direction' and many
more</li>
<li>Programs can be defined and reused many times with different
parameters, all through .material scripts</li>
</ul>
<li>Materials now support <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">multiple
'techniques'</span>, which can be used as automatic fallbacks for older
cards which don't support the requisite features for your preferred
shading approach<br>
</li>
<li><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Material LOD</span> -
you can tell materials to change technique over distance to save
rendering power on distant objects; this is subject to the same control
parameters (camera bias and entity bias) that is used for mesh LOD so
you can tweak it heavily</li>
<li><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Scriptable multipass
rendering</span>; you can now specify multiple passes in one material
if you wish, and those passes can also be iterated once per light
automatically, and the engine will call the pass with each nearby light</li>
<li>The .material script format has been extensively upgraded to
handle all these new options; however if you have 0.12.x or previous
scripts you can automatically update them using the OgreMaterialUpgrade
tool</li>
</ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Light
management upgraded</span>; you can now have an unlimited number of
lights in the scene, and OGRE will pick and use the 'n' closest lights
('n' is configurable per pass in the material scripts) which are within
their attenuation range when rendering an object. This makes light
management much more practical, especially when using vertex and
fragment programs. As mentioned above, passes can even be configured to
iterate using the 'n' nearest lights.</li>
<li><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0); font-weight: bold;">More
texture formats supported</span>: we now support <span
style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">1D</span> textures, <span
style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">compressed textures</span> (DXT
formats), <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">volume textures</span>
(true 3D textures, not just 6 faces like cube maps), and loading all of
the above from the <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">.dds format</span>,
even in GL.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">XCode </span>IDE
support on Mac OSX<br>
</li>
<li>Precompiled header support on VC6 and VC7, this makes compilation
a lot faster.</li>
<li>Updated 3DS and Maya exporters<br>
</li>
<li>Frame events can now be raised externally, which makes it easier
to update the internal state of particle systems, controllers et al
when you're running your own rendering loop instead of using
Root::startRendering.</li>
<li>Texture filtering can now be controlled more finely by optionally
setting the min, mag an mip filter instead of one abstracted filter
type.<br>
</li>
<li>Fonts now look cleaner, texture size has been optimised and
filtering tuned <br>
</li>
<li>The 'v' texture coordinate has been flipped so that the origin is
now in the top-left, this removes the need to flip textures and
improves loading times as well as making compressed texture support
feasible. The .mesh format will be converted on the fly automatically,
but you should use OgreMeshUpgrade to fix it permanently</li>
</ul>
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.12.3 (4 January 2004) -
Maintenance Release<br>
</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.12.2:<br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>Fixed a problem with overlay sizes when using multiple render
targets</li>
<li>Fixed a bug with frame rate stats when using multiple render
targets<br>
</li>
<li>Fixed a few boundary conditions in the mesh LOD generation which
could cause crashes</li>
<li>GL render system now pumps events properly in Windows</li>
<li>RenderTarget::writeContentsToTimestampedFile erroneous characters
removed</li>
<li>Compatibility with new STLport version (4.6)</li>
<li>Fixed a few memory leaks in D3D</li>
<li>Fixed a buffer overrun problem in TextAreaGuiElement when using
'\n'<br>
</li>
<li>Fixed a precompiled header option which sneaked into 0.12 in VC6
OgreMain<br>
</li>
</ul>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.12.2 (21 November 2003) -
Maintenance Release<br>
</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.12.1:<br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>Blender exporter updated; now supports the latest version of
Blender, and
also supports animation</li>
<li>Wings3D exporter updated, now supports the new uv exporting
format of 0.98.16b</li>
<li>Fixed bug in BspIntersectionQuery which caused intersectins to be
reported between entities and the world when collision was disabled</li>
<li>Meshes exported with more than 4 bone assignments per vertex now
have their weights rebalanced to just 4 automatically on conversion to
.mesh<br>
</li>
<li>Fixed a bug in Quaternion::Slerp which resulted in a non-unit
Quaternion being returned sometimes when the 'shortestPath' option was
used. This manifested itself as oddly scaling bones when animating an
entity<br>
</li>
<li>Fixed a bug in ray / plane intersection where it was incorrectly
concluded that the ray was parallel to the plane</li>
<li>Fixed some D3D memory leaks</li>
<li>Fixed some Mesh automatic loading and unloading issues</li>
<li>Colour values in XML files are now parsed as r,g,b,a instead of a
packed long</li>
</ul>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.12.1 (12 October 2003) -
Maintenance Release<br>
</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.12.0:<br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>Added new, improved Maya exporter from macross and fifty1</li>
<li>Fixed bug in the TerrainSceneManager where we were locking a
write-only buffer for reading</li>
<li>Added lines in bootstrap to make sure the correct versions of
auto* tools are used on Gentoo</li>
<li>Fixed screenshot taking bug in Direct3D9 on some older cards</li>
<li>Fixed bounding boxes on skeletally animated entities with other
entities attached to bones</li>
<li>Fixed particle display problem in VC6 release mode<br>
</li>
<li>Fixed links in tutorials index</li>
<li>Fixed bug in BillboardSet::removeBillboard and getBillboard when
indexing a billboard in the latter part of the list</li>
<li>XMLConverter now deals with multiple texture coordinate sets
properly</li>
<li>Fixed minor issue in StringConverter's quaternion handling</li>
<li>NatureSceneManager now clears down terrain data properly</li>
<li>New option in ConfigFile to turn off trimming of values, used in
loading ogre.cfg since some ATI drivers have a trailing space<br>
</li>
</ul>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.12.0 (23 September 2003) - Major
Release <br>
</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.11.0:</p>
<ul>
<li>Complete overhaul of core geometry usage resulting in optimised
use of hardware vertex and index buffers, providing significant speed
boosts on all cards, typically of between 50 and 200% depending on the
application. ATI 9500+ cards on DirectX9 will see particularly large
increases (often five-fold) due to their particular affinity to this
approach.</li>
<li>Geometry structures redesigned to support the above and also to
provide the basis for vertex and pixel shaders. This will not affect
you unless you manipulated geometry structures such as the old
GeometryData directly - those who did <a href="vbo-update/index.html">should
read about the details of the changes</a>.</li>
<li>Transparent materials no longer assume that depth writing needs
to be off, this setting was causing some problems with those using
alpha blending. Those of you using transparent materials which do need
depth writing to be turned off will need to set it in your material
scripts</li>
<li>DirectX 8 rendersystem retired, the current DirectX rendersystem
is now DirectX9, with legacy cards supported through the DirectX7
rendersystem or OpenGL</li>
<li>Support for cubic textures and cubic reflection mapping added</li>
<li>Support for DOT3 bump mapping added</li>
<li>Significant speed improvements on rebuilding bezier patch
surfaces, changing detail level is now a lot faster</li>
<li>Binary .mesh format updated - please run 'OgreMeshUpgrade' (from
Tools/MeshUpgrader) on your old meshes, they may not work properly
unless you do this</li>
<li>OgreXmlConverter now includes parameters to allow you to generate
LODs as you convert</li>
<li>Mesh serializer now rationalises bone assignments so that only 4
are included per vertex</li>
<li>DTDs for .mesh.xml and .skeleton.xml added</li>
<li>Added Gtk platform manager with support for ogre as a Gtk/GL
widget</li>
<li>3D Studio Exporter now supports IK and Biped</li>
<li>Lightwave converter added</li>
<li>Wings3D converter added</li>
<li>Memory leaks with controllers removed</li>
<li>Visual real-time profiling tool added</li>
<li>Many bugfixes and minor enhancements</li>
</ul>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.11.0 (18 June 2003)</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.10.0:</p>
<ul>
<li> SceneQuery introduced; a generic way to query the SceneManager
database of objects and world geometry in a way which is optimised per
scene management technique but transparent for the client application.
Currently only IntersectionSceneQuery is implemented but RaySceneQuery,
SphereSceneQuery and others will soon be available too</li>
<li> ReferenceApplication introduced; this is a new library which
sits on top of the main OGRE library in order to provide a reference
implementation of combining OGRE with other libraries for use in a full
application. Currently combines OGRE and ODE to provide an easy to use
collision and realistic physics system, utilising the new SceneQuery
functions for generic collision detection. Object to object collision
is currently supported, together this object to world collision for the
BspSceneManager (ie collision against Quake3 levels), see the
BspCollision demo for an example. Per-object friction, bounciness and
mass parameters are all definable, also most of the ODE joint types ie
ball, hinge, hinge2, universal. World collision for the terrain
managers will be added shortly.</li>
<li> Many structural enhancements to the GLRenderSystem, including an
extension manager, separation of window creation etc into a GLSupport
class (to enable platform specific window management). Win32GLSupport
added so Win32 no longer uses SDL for window management.</li>
<li> Hardware mipmap generation supported in GL 1.3+</li>
<li>New demos: BspCollision and Demo_Water</li>
<li> RenderTargetListener now supports pre and post Viewport update
events</li>
<li> RenderSystem now supports anisotropic texture filtering and dot3
texture operations</li>
<li> Significant updates to the 3D Studio Max exporter, now very
mature</li>
<li> Added 3 more basic mesh exporters / converters: Maya, Wings3D
and VRML 97</li>
<li> Attaching objects to a skeleton: any MovableObject (entities,
particle systems etc) can now be attached to any bone on an entity, and
will move correctly with the animation</li>
<li> XMLConverter can now generate / update LOD information for
meshes too</li>
<li> Bones can now be manually controlled in combination with
animation tracks much more easily, allowing you to do things like tilt
a characters head toward a target while playing other animations, make
a character bend at the waist etc.</li>
<li> New particle affectors: ScaleAffector (particle resizing) and
ColourFaderAffector2 (dual-state colour affector which changes
behaviour based on a particle's TTL)</li>
<li> Alternative terrain engine added (NatureSceneManager), supports
paging and very large areas</li>
<li> Significant speed enhancements to Node, in particular skeletal
animation is now many times faster for large skeletons</li>
<li> Interface breaking change since 0.10.0: SceneNode::createChild
now returns a Node* rather than a SceneNode*, you will have to cast it.
This was to resolve virtualisation problems</li>
<li> Platform-specific Timer classes and general timing improvements
mean that accuracy and consistency is much better</li>
<li> Rendering to texture now supported in GL as well as D3D</li>
<li> SDLRenderSystem renamed to GLRenderSystem</li>
<li> Python support resurrected, Linux only for now due to Boost
problems with VC</li>
<li> Gui enhancements, including pop up menus and scrollable text
areas and being able to #include in .overlay files to reuse definitions
(NB: the event and gui classes will shortly be moved into a separate
plugin)</li>
<li> Added ability to switch between buffered and unbuffered input on
demand</li>
<li> VC++.Net 2003 support added</li>
<li> MaterialSerializer for writing .material scripts from an
in-memory version</li>
<li> Many bugfixes, including the removal of all remaining memory
leaks</li>
</ul>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.10.0 (28 Feb 2003)</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.9.7:</p>
<ul>
<li>Major speed increases for large scenes. Scenes with more than
1500 objects are now feasible at high frame rates.</li>
<li>3D Studio Max 4 / 5 script for exporting meshes and skeletons to
XML (which can then be converted to binary using XMLConverter)</li>
<li>Major updates to the Python bindings</li>
<li>Added UserDefinedObject to allow references back to external app
objects from OGRE objects</li>
<li>Experimental Direct3D 9 Render System</li>
<li>Skeletal animation now supports additive blending of multiple
animations as well as average blending</li>
<li>Bugfixes & small feature enhancements</li>
</ul>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.9.7 (26 January 2003)</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.99f:</p>
<ul>
<li>Mac OSX support added</li>
<li>Mesh LOD support: both automatic algorithmic detail reduction,
and manual LOD assignment</li>
<li>Milkshape exporter extended to support generation of LODs</li>
<li>Rendering to a texture (supported in Direct3D only for now, GL
support to follow)</li>
<li>Screenshot support</li>
<li>DevIL now used for image loading / saving</li>
<li>Blender export script</li>
<li>Initial GUI support and buffered input support</li>
<li>Updates to the Python exports </li>
<li>A few vector / quaternion optimisations</li>
<li>Linux / Mac 'install' target paths rationalised</li>
<li>Bugfixes (including GL lighting and texture effect problems, many
memory leaks fixed)</li>
<li>Version numbering change (to more standard format)</li>
</ul>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.99f (1 December 2002)</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.99e:</p>
<ul>
<li>Terrain rendering through the OctreeSceneManager subclass
TerrainSceneManager, including detail texturing and vertex colouring
options</li>
<li>Overlays can now have pixel metrics as well as relative metrics,
and can be flexibly aligned</li>
<li>New debug overlay</li>
<li>Curved sky planes (fog-friendly alternative to sky domes)</li>
<li>Animation tracks can now scale nodes as well as rotate and
translate</li>
<li>Depth bias now available as a material option, for doing decals</li>
<li>Stencil buffer operations now supported</li>
<li>RenderQueueListener allows custom filters to be plugged in,
compositing operations to be performed</li>
<li>New version of 3DSMax exporter </li>
<li>Many bugfixes (as usual)</li>
</ul>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.99e (25 October 2002)</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.99d:</p>
<ul>
<li>Overlay support (HUDs, menus)</li>
<li>Font rendering</li>
<li>Octree scene manager added</li>
<li>XMLConverter allows conversion of .mesh and .skeleton files to
XML (XML to .mesh and .skeleton is not finished yet)</li>
<li>DirectX 8 render system</li>
<li>Spline interpolation of animation, both for skeletal animation
and for animating any SceneNode</li>
<li>Automatic camera tracking, spline animations can be used to
script smooth camera sweeps</li>
<li>Many bugfixes </li>
</ul>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.99d (5 September 2002)</p>
<p align="left" class="MainContent">Changes since 0.99c:</p>
<ul>
<li>Full Linux support!</li>
<li>Debug memory manager tracing memory leaks</li>
<li>Generic animation support via Animation, AnimationTrack and
KeyFrame classes</li>
<li>Skeletal animation on meshes, including multiple bone assignments
and animation blending</li>
<li>Updated Milkshape exporter, exports skeleton and animations, can
split the combined sequence into many separate animations</li>
<li>Codec structure, used for loading images more generically and can
be used for general coding / decoding</li>
<li>Many bugfixes</li>
<li>New tutorials</li>
</ul>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.99c (19 July 2002)</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.99b:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Enhancements:</p>
<ul>
<li>New MeshSerializer class for importing / exporting mesh data,
to be used as the framework for all future modelling tool exporters </li>
<li>Milkshape3D exporter provided, which uses MeshSerializer to
export to the new .mesh file format. This replaces the 3ds2oof utility
which along with the .oof is now deprecated, although .oof models can
still be loaded. In this version the Milkshape exporter only exports
static mesh data without bones or animation.</li>
<li>SceneNode now supports scaling (uniform and non-uniform),
including the option to inherit parent scale or just use own</li>
<li>Completely new source code folder layout; should be more
obvious than the old one. All dependencies are now included in the code
structure to avoid having to distribute binary libraries</li>
<li>Boost added to the Dependencies area</li>
<li>New tutorial added, kindly written by Nicholas Green</li>
</ul>
<p>Work-in-progress:</p>
<ul>
<li>Linux makefiles now present, buildable with gcc 3+</li>
<li>SDL / OpenGL render system implementation provided, not totally
complete yet but almost there</li>
<li>Skeletal animation classes (Animation, AnimationTrack,
KeyFrame, Skeleton, Bone) </li>
</ul>
<p>Bugfixes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Math::NEG_INFINITY now correctly defined</li>
<li>ColourValue getAsLongARGB alpha bug fixed</li>
<li>Problems with camera positioning & lookat behaviour when
attached to a SceneNode fixed</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.99b (9 June 2002)</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.98b:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Enhancements:</p>
<ul>
<li>Particle systems implemented, including customisable emitters /
affectors through the use of plugins, defining particle system
templates through text scripts for easy modification, flexible culling
options, flat and oriented billboards for point or directional
particles, fast-forwarding of systems to avoid obvious particle system
startup, force application, randomised colours & emission angles,
randomised velocities and lifetimes and much more.</li>
<li>Billboarding support (used by particle systems, but can also be
used on their own to create backgrounds, static light flares etc)</li>
<li>Now builds under VC.Net (VC7), .sln and .vcproj files are now
included in the distribution</li>
<li>Zip archives now cache a file index for more efficient retrieval</li>
<li>StringInterface base class and helper classes like ParamCommand
and StringConverter now available to make scriptable classes easier to
create</li>
</ul>
<p>Bugfixes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Several bugs in 3DS2OOF 3D Studio converter fixed, such as
exported files including camera & lights (these are now ignored),
objects with missing SmoothGroups, and issue with merging multiple
objects</li>
<li>Environment mapping bug which caused incorrect wrapping is now
fixed</li>
<li>All container 'wrappers' have now been replaced with the
original STL class since we are now using STLport and don't have the
dll boundary problems present in theMicrosoft STL implementation</li>
<li>SceneNodes now derive their orientation & position on
demand if they are out of date</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.98b (29 March 2002)</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.97e:</p>
<ul>
<li>Material scripts. All materials can now be specified in .material
files, which are loaded at startup and can be altered without
recompiling your application. Tweak to your hearts content! See the
material scripting section in the Tutorials for more information.</li>
<li>Landscape rendering - a ROAM scene manager example implementation
is now included in the distribution, together with an example demo.
Whilst the ROAM approach will not be developed further due to it's
relatively high CPU overhead, it serves as an example of how vastly
different scene managers can be plugged into Ogre. </li>
<li>Billboarding. Billboards can now be used to create special
effects. Particle systems using this facility are under development.</li>
<li>Better culling on the standard scene manager. The standard
non-scene-specific scene manager now hierarchically culls movables
based on their bounding boxes. A triangle counter monitors culling
performance.</li>
<li>Refactored the methods called in the main rendering loop in
SceneManager to allow subclasses to modify the behaviour more easily
without having to duplicate code.</li>
<li>Better compliance with STL standards. Ogre is now built using <a
href="http://www.stlport.org">STLport</a> on both Windows and Linux,
and this has necessitated a closer fit with the STL standard rather
than the Microsoft implementation. </li>
</ul>
<p> </p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.97e (16 Feb 2002)</p>
<p align="left"">Changes since 0.97b:</p>
<ul>
<li>Archive driver system is in! Say bye-bye to the Ogre::Archive
class and welcome to dynamically-loaded archive codecs!</li>
<li>Two archive codecs are provided: FileSystem codec (works like a
normal directory) and Zip Archive codec (works with Zip archives)</li>
<li>Changed all examples and the Indoor Engine to work with the new
codecs</li>
<li>Modified the way ResourceManager::_findResourceData returns data:
now it takes a pointer to a DataChunk and fills the pointed object with
all the data, thus avoiding unnecesary memory copying (and eventually
fragmentation)</li>
<li>Some cosmetic changes to the way plug-ins are loaded - no need to
specify the extension of the plug-in anymore, and it is registered as
given in the Plugins.cfg file. This is because we don't want to load a
Dll two times - the first time as [PluginPath]\PluginName.dll and the
second time as plain PluginName</li>
<li>Cosmetic changes in projects and workspaces. They should give no
error when compiling and you shouldn't need to create the necessary
directories yourselves</li>
<li>The Resources folder has changed. The two .oof models and their
textures now reside in zip archives to reflect the usage of the new
Archive codecs.</li>
</ul>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.97b (6 Feb 2002)</p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.96b:</p>
<ul>
<li>Added some more standard Controller objects to allow easy texture
scrolling, rotating and scaling. Added support for these to the Quake3
renderer .</li>
<li>Wave-based controllers allow texture modifications (among other
things) to be based on wave types rather than just constant effects</li>
<li>Added more friendly error dialog when an unhandled exception is
thrown</li>
<li>Fixed a couple of bugs in the config dialog which causes crashes</li>
<li>Fogging enabled - scene-wide or customised per material</li>
</ul>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">v0.96b (6 January 2002)</p>
<p align="left">I've changed this log a little to be more concise
regarding changes made between snapshot versions. </p>
<p align="left">Changes since 0.95b:</p>
<ul>
<li>Animated tetxure support. Each texture layer can have multiple
frames, with one being active at a time.</li>
<li>Controller architecture. Controller allow object properties to be
updated based on other events or values whilst only loosely coupling
the source and destination objects together. In this version
Controllers are used for animating texture layers by setting the active
texture frame based on a frame timer object.</li>
<li>Quake 3 .shader script support. Animated textures, multilayer
textures etc now being loaded in. No scrolling, rotating or stretching
effects yet though</li>
<li>Skyplanes, skydomes and skyboxes are now supported</li>
<li>Major improvement in rendering speed thanks to a far smarter
render state management approach. </li>
<li>Transparent objects now always render correctly when in front of
solid objects.</li>
</ul>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">6 January 2002</p>
<p align="left">Most bugs in shader parsing sorted out. A few shader
effects are not supported yet, but most are there and look good.
Texture coordinate modifications are missing for the moment, but
environment mapping is in (albeit a little different from Q3A's method
- I chose to use cameraspace reflection vectors to produce the effect
because these are hardware accelerable, whilst Q3A's method of using
the vector from camera location to vertex is not), as are all the
shafts of light, animated flames etc.</p>
<p align="left">No MD3 models are being rendered so there are a few
blank spots in the level where a gargoyle, wall sconce etc should be.
I'm not going to implement this for now, I've proved the point I wanted
to prove which is that Ogre can handle this type of scene well. It's
just a few Q3-specific details which are missing which is no big deal,
I never set out to produce a working copy of Q3A.</p>
<p align="left">I will be releasing another snapshot based on this
codebase, and also will release binary demos of all the examples.</p>
<p align="left">Next: texture coordinate modifications, extensions to
the controller classes. Then particle systems. </p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">5 January 2002</p>
<p align="left">Skydomes and skyboxes are in and working, giving you 3
types of sky to play with. Skyboxes are for static, wrap-around
environment textures like space, whilst skydomes are like skyplanes,
but curved.</p>
<p align="left">Quake3 shader script conversion is going well, Ogre
loads in the .shader files and converts them to Material objects as
required, meaning that you can now see flames, shafts of light, TV
screens etc inside Ogre. Animated textures are being loaded but not
animated yet - I'm going to try and get animation working within a nice
generic OO controller framework if I can rather than bash out a
single-use approach.</p>
<p align="left">One thing I've noticed now the sky is being displayed
is there are 'sparklies' around the curved surfaces visible mostly when
there is a light-coloured sky. Damn. It appears the points generated
from the bezier patches don't quite match up with the surrounding
static geometry, meaning there are small gaps. This is a TODO.</p>
<p align="left">I still need to fix the odd crash point and a few
shaders aren't being loaded properly. Also environment mapping needs a
bit of work since Quake3 bases them on camera position -> vertex
rather than camera eye vector -> normal, which means they look
wrong. I should alos render the 'models' in the level i.e. geometry
that doesn't have lightmaps like gargoyles.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">27 December 2001</p>
<p align="left">Skyplanes are now working. You can now create a plane
which is at contant distance from the camera at and orientation for use
as a sky. I'll be moving on to skyboxes imminently which will allow
full wrap-around skies.</p>
<p align="left">I have also totally revamped the example code that is
included with the engine. Instead of the single TestApp project, there
is now an Examples folder with multiple projects under this which demo
each effect. I have also created an object-oriented framework for the
examples too, meaning they are now a lot better structured and
hopefully better to understand.</p>
<p align="left">I also intend to release some binary demos soon so
people can quickly see what the engine is capable of without having to
build from the source. The good news this week is that I just did a
Release build of the Quake3 level renderer, and it runs at a very sweet
170fps in windowed mode on my Athlon 1Ghz and GeForce 2. In fullscreen
mode at 1024x768 at 32-bit colour it still manages between 50 and 80
fps. I'm very pleased indeed. I would like to tidy up some of the
missing textures before I do a binary release so I'll be sorting out
the skybox support and other texture effects first.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">24 December 2001</p>
<p align="left">Refactored the entity rendering routines in the base
SceneManager class to make them easier to reuse in subclasses.</p>
<p align="left">Material class enhanced to contain all the other render
settings such as depth buffer parameters, culling modes, texture
filtering etc. It is now possible to drive all the rendering settings
via the Material class now so that no calls are required to the
RenderSystem class. This makes the settings more intuitive to use, and
ensures that you can have different settings per object if you want by
assigning different materials, and the SceneManager controls the
changes to the rendering settings.</p>
<p align="left">Major rewrite of SceneManager::setMaterial and added
RenderSystem::_setTextureUnitSettings (used by the former) so that only
<b>changes</b> to the material settings are sent to the RenderSystem.
This ensures that rendering state changes are minimised and that custom
settings are reset only when required. This has improved the framerate
across the board by about 50%. A further optimisation which is still to
be made is ordering the materials in the render sequence to minimise
the render state changes still further, e.g. scheduling 2 materials
that have the same layer 0 texture but different layer 1 textures next
to each other.</p>
<p align="left">Started adding sky plane and sky box support to the
SceneManager class, but this is not yet functional.</p>
<p align="left">Merry Xmas!</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">4 December 2001</p>
<p align="left">General Bezier Patch support through the PatchSurface
class.</p>
<p align="left">Quake3 level loading uses curved surface support to
display Q3A's bezier curves. Custom shader scripts still to be done.</p>
<p align="left">IMPORTANT: To compile & run the TestApp demo
application you will need to change line 414 of WinMainTest.cpp to
point at your Quake3Arena pak0.pk3, since I can't distribute Q3A levels
and textures for size and copyright reasons.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">11 November 2001</p>
<p>First Quake3 level rendering release. No support for shader scripts
or curved surfaces yet. </p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">12 October 2001</p>
<p>Modified the material blending routines to make it more reliable to
fall back on multipass rendering whilst preserving all the correct
effects. To do this I had to simplify the basic multitexture blending
operations which automatically fall back to multipass, and require that
the application explicitly specifies a fallback blend multipass
operation if it chooses to use the more complex blending modes which
are only available under multitexture hardware. I hope by doing this I
keep it simple for most cases (people normally use jusy ADD, MODULATE,
REPLACE or ALPHABLEND anyway) whilst still allowing complete
flexibility for those who like to tinker with the obscure modes.</p>
<p>Decided to make another point release even without the finished
Quake3 stuff because there's so much that's useful.</p>
<p></p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">9 October 2001</p>
<p>Object/scene blending operations (as opposed to multiple texture
layer blending on the same object) support has been added, allowing new
effects like transparency.</p>
<p>I keep getting distracted from my Quake3 level work but I am
progressing - the reason why I switched to this subject is that I
realised my fallback technique to multipass rendering when not enough
multitexturing hardware was available was not correct, and in order to
be able to fix it I needed these new blending options. I'm now
wondering whether to fix the multipass fallback now I have the tools or
to leave it until later. Right now, if you use more texture layers than
the hardware supports in a single pass, things won't look right. I'll
get to it.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">6 October 2001</p>
<p>Ok, remember the problem from 16 September re texture coordinates
and confusion over whether (0,0) was the top or bottom left corner of
the texture? Well it turns out that once again Direct3D is the odd one
out, and 3DS is actually using the more common convention, i.e. (0,0)
is the <i>bottom</i> left corner. I have therefore changed the 3ds2oof
routine <i>back</i> to how it was before (using 3DS UV corrdinates
directly) and am flipping the texture itself in the Y-axis when loading
it in the Direct3D texture implementation to compensate
(D3DTexture.cpp). I should have checked more thoroughly before changing
things to be in line with D3D, I should have known it would probably be
the odd one.</p>
<p>I've done this because I want Ogre to follow industry standards
(e.g. right-handed coordinates, anticlockwise vertex winding) rather
than Direct3D's viewpoint which is usually the opposite, even though
it's Direct3D I'm working on at the moment. I do this because it's what
everybody will be used to when they come from maths texts or modelling
tools, and is the same as the OpenGL approach (so the OpenGL port
should be easier than Direct3D). I just compensate inside my
Direct3D-specific classes (e.g. by flipping the Z axis, changing the
culling mode, or flipping the texture as above).</p>
<p></p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">5 October 2001</p>
<p>Progressive updates are being made to the OgreEngineIndoor module in
CVS. Quake3 levels are being loaded and coversion is in progress.</p>
<p>I have also fixed a couple more bugs: the ColourValue class was
implementing colours a little too bright and wrapped around to black
when pure white was specified. This has been fixed. In addition, the
mipmap generation was not generating enough mipmaps under Direct3D
because D3DX ignores requests for the number of mipmaps and generates
as many as required to reduce to a 1x1 texture. This caused smaller
mipmaps to be black and thus textures would wink out at long distances.
This has been fixed.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">16 September 2001</p>
<p>Slow going due to moving house. However, fixed a problem with
texture coordinates as converted from 3DS using 3ds2oof - I just
realised that 3DS uses UV coordinates where V=0.0 is at the <i>bottom</i>
of the texture map, instead of the top as with everything else! That
explains the strange textures on some models. Fixed 3ds2oof to make
V=(1.0 - V) during the conversion. Reconvert your models!</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">29 August 2001</p>
<p>Ogre now supports loading of resources from more flexible locations,
including compressed archives (.zip and Quake3 .pk3 files). You can
specify a list of search paths and archives which are either general
across the whole of Ogre or specific to a resource type (e.g. textures,
meshes).</p>
<p>I've also added support for loading TGA images as well, since Quake3
maps use them in places. </p>
<p>I have also dropped support for BMP files. This is because I have
had to implement memory-based versions of the image decoders to support
loading from archives, and to be frank I couldn't be bothered to
implement one for BMP since it's a naff format in my opinion and tied
to the Windows platform anyway. Ogre supports JPEG, PNG and TGA which
should be plenty of flexibility. Personally I think when you've got PNG
(for lossless) and JPEG (for lossy), you don't need anything else.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">10 August 2001</p>
<p>Texture blending is now in and working! The new TestApp demonstrates
the functionality by loading a base model with a standard texture, then
adding a second texture layer and applying an environment map to it.
The keys 0-7 change the texture blending mode to show what effects
different parameters have.</p>
<p>I'm now moving onto other features; I want to look at Quake3 file
loading - there are a couple of things nagging me about managing
materials and entities that I'd like to look at but I'd really like to
get started on Q3A bsp files now. I also wanted to work on animation,
both within models (skeletal animation & bones) and for paths of
objects (bezier curves & bsplines), but I just don't have time to
do everything I want to! Q3A files first.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">5 August 2001</p>
<p>Back from a break for holidays!</p>
<p>The Camera class now allows a SceneNode to override it's position
and orientation when the Camera is attached to a SceneNode. This will
allow cameras attached to world objects etc.</p>
<p>Started implementing the texture blending operations - the interface
is complete, I'm now moving onto the Direct3D implementation. For the
moment I'm not worrying about minimising the number of times that
changes to blending parameters are made during a frame - I'm still
concentrating on minimising the texture changes, which is the main
overhead anyway. More optimisation will likely come along with new
SceneManager subclasses.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">21 July 2001</p>
<p>The Camera class now uses quaternions too. Camera rotation is a lot
more concise now (instead of storing & trying to update 3 vectors I
just have a single quaternion) and is more predictable and hopefully
more flexible for the future. </p>
<p>You can attach a Camera to a SceneNode (this is meant for use in
having cameras tracking other objects in the world) but I have yet to
implement this - I intend now that they're both on the same basis that
if you choose to attach a camera to a scene node then the SceneNode
overrides the camera's own position and direction, and maybe even that
they update each other (so telling a camera to look somewhere would
update the orientation of it's SceneNode too).</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">19 July 2001</p>
<p>Updated SceneNode class to use quaternions internally for all
orientations / rotations. This should both be faster and give me more
flexibility for the future. Also added a lot more manipulation routines
the SceneNode class which were sorely lacking before if you wanted to
move stuff around. The Camera class still uses matrices internally but
I intend to change that so that a Camera depends on the SceneNode it is
attached to for positioning rather than doing it itself. To this end I
will need to add extra features to the SceneNode class to replicate
functions like lookAt(), which is ok since this will be handy for
pointing other objects at each other too.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader"></p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">17 July 2001</p>
<p>Fixed an issue with the 3ds2oof utility - it now generates vertex
normals based on smooth groups rather than just averaging based on the
faces which use the vertex. This removes artefacts along model 'seams'
e.g. the point where a texture wraps around on the model.</p>
<p>Reimplemented environment mapping using the new
Material::TextureLayer structure. Started work on adding more
manipulation features to the SceneNode class (body code still to do).</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">4 July 2001</p>
<p>Python now has full access to the engine, and it's working great.
I've also enabled callbacks into Python from the engine, so you can
register a Python class as a listener for frame update events so C++
calls Python every frame. Nice.</p>
<p>Future Python developments include an embedded version of Python in
Ogre so you can build a compiled application which still used
interpreted scripts for some things - this will be useful for level
scripting etc where the script can be kept in the level data. For now
though I'm going back to developing the core engine features .</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">20 June 2001</p>
<p>Spending an awful lot of time exposing all the necessary objects and
their interfaces to Python (up till now I have it working but only a
few interfaces were exposed). About 90% there now, with a few issues to
iron out - I had to extend the compiler heap limit to get it to compile
so far since the heavy usage of templates puts a great strain on the
compiler memory usage. In a few days I should be in a position to do
all my engine testing through Python as well as through a custom C++
application (currently TestApp). </p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">13 June 2001</p>
<p>Added FrameListener and FrameEvent classes in order to represent the
frame update callback functions in a more object-oriented way. User
applications now extend FrameListener and register their interest in
receiving frame events - this is based on the Java model of event
listening. Note that a boon of this method is that Boost Python allows
you to extend existing C++ classes so this provides a perfect mechanism
to have C++ call Python scripts when events occur. </p>
<p>I intend to extend this pattern to other events like collisions when
I implement them. </p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">10 June 2001</p>
<p align="left">Changed from using SWIG to Boost Python for Python
script integration<a href="http://boost.org"></a>. I changed because
Boost Python supports C++ features much beter (including catching C++
exceptions and turning them into Python exceptions, support for
namespaces and overloaded operators), it integrates better with my
build cycle (doesn't require a separate generate from interface files
and can be built directly into the library), and is more up-to-date
with the latest Python libraries. I was finding that SWIG's emphasis on
pure C as opposed to C++ was getting in the way, and Boost has
definitely addressed this.</p>
<p align="left">Introduced PythonLink class to expose classes to Python.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">7 June 2001</p>
<p align="left">Implemented Python integration using SWIG (Simplified
Wrapper and Interface Generator). You can now start and initialise Ogre
from a Python console and drive it interactively. More work required to
expose the full interface to Python however.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">31 May 2001</p>
<p align="left">Cut over to CVS - CVS repository is now up and running
at SourceForge.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">20 May 2001</p>
<p align="left">SceneNode class integrated with Entity / SubEntity
classes. Working basic scene graph. Also reimplemented my previous hack
using DirectInput as a proper platform-specific user input class -
added the OgreUtility module for this purpose.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">15 May 2001</p>
<p align="left">SubEntity implementation complete, together with
customisable Materials at the SubEntity level. Material usage by
SubEntities is now indexed by the SceneManager so that rendering can be
grouped by Material such that as few as possible render state changes
take place. Note that this does not currently deal with transparency.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">13 May 2001</p>
<p align="left">Bugs with the new Mesh loading routines now ironed out.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">24 April 2001</p>
<p align="left">Implemented Mesh, SubMesh and MeshManager classes for
loading Ogre Object Format files (converted from .3ds using the Ogre
3ds2oof tool). Decided to allow the original 3ds mesh to be broken down
into chunks specific per material or grouped as a whole depending on
requirements. The 3ds2oof utility makes a goos guess as to what is
best, based on the percentage of the vertices each SubMesh uses out of
the whole model - the lower the percentage the greater chance it will
have a dedicated vertex list rather than sharing the whole since that
saves sending unnecessary vertices to the pipeline. However this can be
customised with parameters since you may want to use vertex buffers
where it's more efficient to store 1 buffer even if you only use parts
of it.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">1 April 2001</p>
<p align="left">Began overhaul of Mesh loading routines.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">30 March 2001</p>
<p align="left">Switched to Doxygen for document generation since ccdoc
still doesn't support namespaces. Doxygen is better at
cross-referencing anyway and draws nice diagrams.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">24 March 2001</p>
<p align="left">Added JPEG loading support, and moved this and existing
image loading code (PNG) into the Image class. BMP loading is still
supported but only on Windows platforms so this is still residing in
the D3DTexture class as a special case.</p>
<p align="left">Improved the handling of non-square textures on
hardware that supports only square textures. The image is now stretched
into the square area so that the relative texture coordinates are still
valid and no black bands appear on the model.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">23 March 2001</p>
<p align="left">Multiple viewports per window is implemented and
working Ok. Z-Order also applies so picture-in-picture views are
possible by placing a smaller viewport on top of another larger one.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">11 March 2001</p>
<p align="left">Changed the default mechanism for supplying vertex
components (position, normals, texture coords, colours) to the
RenderOperation class. They were previously assumed to be part of the
same buffer with flags indicating which were present. However this was
too restrictive and prevented you using entirely separate memory areas
for different components, and adding extra components to vertices on
the fly. </p>
<p align="left">Instead the RenderOperation class now takes pointers
for each component, and a 'span' value determines the gap between each
value. This allows you to use separate buffers if you like, but also
use a combined buffer if that suits you (by using the 'span' value to
skip over values in between).</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">6 March 2001</p>
<p align="left">Implemented a 3DStudio conversion tool that works
directly from the .3DS files rather than from ASCII exports (as
previously) or from a MAX plugin as some others do, which requires a
3DS license. I based my code on an existing open source routine but I
have exteded it since it had a few shortcomings. The tool is called
'3ds2oof' because it converts 3DS files to a proprietary format, .OOF
(Ogre Object File). This is because it's more efficient for me to do
extra processing at conversion time like calculating bounding boxes,
splitting vertex buffers, strippifying etc (not that I'm doing all this
yet, but I <i>can</i>) rather than at load time as I would have to do
if I loaded direct from 3DS inside Ogre.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">1 March 2001</p>
<p align="left">Over the last 2 weeks I reimplemented my interface to
the DirectX rendering pipeline in the new Ogre structure, under the
D3DRenderSystem class. Rendering requests are now packaged up in the
RenderOperation class, giving me more flexibility on how rendering
requests are submitted and handled. Now all the support classes (mesh
loading, scene management) are needed.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">11 February 2001</p>
<p align="left">I've been picking apart the platform dependencies in
Ogre so it'll be more portable. I'm also making it flexible enough to
handle any number of rendering windows and viewports within thse
windows, and also giving you the choice of an automatic rendering loop
(max frame rate) and a render-on-demand interface much like you would
need for an application like a modelling tool where you want to free up
cycles when things don't move and frae rate isn't the most important
thing.</p>
<p align="left">I now have a nice hierarchy crossing the OgreEngine and
OgreWin32Platform modules, with functionality broken down into
RenderTarget, RenderWindow and Win32RenderWindow classes. Other
platforms can be implemented later, just replacing the
Win32RenderWindow maybe with XRenderWindow or MacRenderWindow.</p>
<p align="left" class="MainHeader">29 December 2000</p>
<p align="left">Ogre development starts again after almost a year's
break while I finished my degree. Lots of research and design work at
this stage to work out how I should structure the object model.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
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