Chapter 1, Installing Ogre 3D, shows how to get and configure Ogre 3D. We also create our first scene and start learning the internals of Ogre 3D

Chapter 2, The Ogre Scene Graph, introduces us to the concept of a scene graph and how it is used for describing 3D scenes

Chapter 3, Camera, Light, and Shadow, adds lights and shadows to our scene and also experiments with different camera settings

Chapter 4, Getting User Input and using the Frame Listener, adds interactivity to our application using user input

Chapter 5, Animating Models with Ogre 3D, will enhance our scene using animations to add more interactivity and realism

Chapter 6, Scene Managers, will introduce us to different concepts for organizing 3D scenes and what implication these choices will have

Chapter 7, Materials with Ogre 3D, will show us how to add a new level of detail and flexibility to our application using materials and shaders.

Chapter 8, The Compositor Framework, will show us how to add post processing effects to change the look of our complete scene with the knowledge about materials

Chapter 9, The Ogre 3D Startup Sequence, shows us how we can use Ogre 3D without the help of an ExampleApplication we had used previously

Chapter 10, Particle Systems and Extending Ogre 3D, gives an introduction to some more advanced techniques and perspectives that can be done with Ogre 3D

You need a solid understanding of C++ and how to create applications using C++ for this book. Of course, you need a compiler to compile the example applications. This book uses Visual Studio as a reference, but any other compiler will also do. Your computer should have a graphic card with 3D capabilities. It would be best if the graphic card supports DirectX 9.0 because Ogre 3D is an open source software and we will download it in Chapter 1. So there is no need for you to have Ogre 3D already installed on your computer.

If you ever wanted to develop 3D application with Ogre 3D, this example-driven book will enable you to do so. Understanding of C++ is needed to follow the examples in the book.

This book is an example-driven introduction to Ogre 3D. Each example shows some new features and you learn step-by-step to create complex scenes with different effects using Ogre 3D. After several examples discussing one topic, there is a do-it-yourself part where you will be challenged to solve problems on your own.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "Delete all the old code in createScene(), except for the plane-related code."

A block of code is set as follows:

void MyFragmentShader2(float2 uv : TEXCOORD0,
out float4 color : COLOR,
uniform sampler2D texture)

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Press Ok and start the Application. "

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