Book Image

OGRE 3D 1.7 Beginner's Guide

Book Image

OGRE 3D 1.7 Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

Want to make your own 3D applications, simulations, and games? OGRE 3D, an open source Object-Oriented 3D Graphics Rendering Engine written in C++, which can be utilized to create a variety of 3D applications and is commonly used in game creation, can help you to do so! OGRE 3D 1.7 Beginner's Guide, based on the latest version 1.7, makes it super easy for you to make your own monsters, spaceship shooters, weapons, enemies, and more!OGRE 3D 1.7 Beginner's Guide will teach you to develop 3D applications that are exciting and interesting and if used correctly can result in stunning games and simulations. You will start from the very beginning and then work your way up to complex scenes and stunning effects.In this book you will start with how to download and configure OGRE 3D, then create your first example scene. With the help of this sample scene, you will be introduced to several related topics each of which will be explained through several other examples and by do-it-yourself tasks. After each example there is a section that explains the theory behind the technique used for deeper understanding. You will also use what you learned in one example in another example and repeat each technique several times while learning new ones at the same time to strengthen the topics learned. Within no time you will master the art of game creation. Imagine how great you will feel when all your friends are playing the great-looking games you've created with OGRE 3D and this book.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Ogre 3D 1.7
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Fixed Function Pipeline and shaders


In this chapter, we have used the so-called Fixed Function Pipeline. This is the rendering pipeline on the graphics card that produces those nice shiny pictures we love looking at. As the prefix Fixed suggests, there isn't a lot of freedom to manipulate the Fixed Function Pipeline for the developer. We can tweak some parameters using the material files, but nothing fancy. That's where shaders can help fill the gap. Shaders are small programs that can be loaded onto the graphics card and then function as a part of the rendering process. These shaders can be thought of as little programs written in a C-like language with a small, but powerful, set of functions. With shaders, we can almost completely control how our scene is rendered and also add a lot of new effects that weren't possible with only the Fixed Function Pipeline.

Render Pipeline

To understand shaders, we need to first understand how the rendering process works as a whole. When rendering, each...