Thanks for the post, very helpful. I just have some follow-up questions.
Skylark wrote: > Hello Basil, > > First piece of advice, take things one step at a time, it might seem > like a lot but it's all easy once you get through it once. > > Also, you seem to be going at this blind. Do you know about OSG's main site? > > > > From there, you can follow the Documentation link on the right, and you > can click "Getting Started" to get an intro with Linux/Unix-centric > build instructions, or you can go to "Platform Specifics" and then > "Windows - Visual Studio" to get Windows-specific build instructions. > Here's the direct link: > > > > This is the CMake command-line tool. You seem to be building for Windows > (from what you say below) so I recommend you use the CMake GUI because > it will give you a list of the available settings you can modify. Until > you know what settings you need to modify, the GUI will be a good tool > to get your bearings. > > Next, about those libs it says you're missing. You can get a prebuilt > dependencies package for Visual Studio 2008 here: > > > > This will take care of the most important dependencies (IMHO the most > important are jpeg, png, gif, etc. to be able to load textures from > images, and freetype to be able to load fonts to display text). But all > in all, most dependencies are entirely optional. OpenAL, CURL, > WxWidgets, Qt, etc fall into that category. If you want to use them, you > can download binaries or build them from source, and then enter the > relevant paths to includes and libraries in the CMake GUI, but until you > know you need a specific dependency, you can assume you don't. > I ran that and am now missing CURL_LIBRARY_DEBUG, FREETYPE_LIBRARY_DEBUG, GIFLIB_LIBRARY_DEBUG, GLUT_LIBRARY_DEBUG, JPEG_LIBRARY_DEBUG, TIFF_LIBRARY_DEBUG, and ZLIB_LIBRARY_DEBUG. Do you know where I can get these? A morning filled with googling and trying to build them myself proved fruitless... > > > If you downloaded the OSG source, you need to compile the whole OSG, not > just an example. Here you're trying to compile an example without having > compiled OSG itself, so of course it won't find the libraries. This is > what I mean when I say to take things one step at a time. You're > skipping whole steps by opening one specific example's project file. > > So, one step at a time. > > 1. Open the CMake GUI > > 2. Drag and drop the root CMakeLists.txt (in the root of your OSG source > tree) onto the CMake GUI window. This will fill the "where is the > source" and "where to build the binaries" fields, though I recommend you > change the "where to build the binaries" to some other directory so you > don't pollute your source tree. I generally add "/build_x86_vc9" or > something like that to identify which platform/compiler combination I'm > generating project files for. > > 3. Click Configure a first time. CMake will ask you whether you want to > create the build directory if it doesn't yet exist, then it will ask you > for which platform/compiler you want to generate. I assume you'll want > to select "Visual Studio 9 (2008) (x86)" or something like that. > > 4. You'll notice the center part of the window will be full of red > fields. First thing to change is to set "ACTUAL_3RDPARTY_DIR" to the > directory where you've put the prebuilt dependencies I linked to above. > Then you can click Configure again, CMake will try to find as many of > the dependencies as it can by itself. > this would just be /OpenSceneGraph/bin correct? > > > 5. At this point you can change settings as you see fit. Make sure you > show Advanced Settings at the top of the CMake window, otherwise some > important settings may be hidden, it's an annoying quirk of CMake. If > CMake didn't find some dependency you know you have, you can fill in its > *_INCLUDE_DIR and *_LIBRARY fields so it will be used. You can check > BUILD_EXAMPLES if you want it to generate project files for all the > examples. Look over the other options you have, but in the end you can > just click Configure until there are no red fields anymore. > > I highly recommend you set CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to some directory in > which you want to put your compiled binaries, again separate from your > source and build trees. That way you're sure where the different things > are, and you won't get files mixed up between the 3. The directory you > specify in CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX is the one you'll eventually use when > you want to develop an application that uses OSG - it will have an > include, a lib, and a bin subdirectories containing the files you expect. > > 6. Click Generate. After a few seconds, it will have finished generating > the project files, and you can close the CMake GUI. > > 7. Open the build directory you specified in "where to build the > binaries" in CMake, and you'll see an "OpenSceneGraph.sln" file. > Double-click that, and you'll see a solution file with a bunch of > projects, first for the OSG libs themselves, and all the examples, > applications, plugins etc. You can then select either Debug or Release, > right-click the INSTALL project and select Build. > > That will start building OSG itself, the plugins, the applications and > the examples. Once all that is built, it will copy the relevant files > into the directory you specified in CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX. > > You can, from that solution, open up one of the examples' source code > and experiment. > > Chris mentioned the OpenSceneGraph Quick Start Guide, which you can find at > > > > and is free to download as a PDF. It's a quick read and will give you a > good start. If you want a printed book, you can check out the > OpenSceneGraph Beginner's Guide at > > > > The OSG web site has some tutorials, but unfortunately I find it's hard > to navigate and some tutorials are out of date. But you should still > have a look as you'll find some good info and explanations. The examples > that come with the source are great for learning, as long as you're > comfortable reading code. :-) > > I think OSG is a good abstraction over OpenGL concepts. If you want a > lightweight framework you could make your own, but among the current > OpenGL-based frameworks I think it's hard to find something better than > OSG. It's a matter of taste though, try it out and see... What do you > expect us to say, you ask this question on a mailing list called > osg-users! :-) > > Hope this helps, and if you have any more questions just ask! > > J-S > Thanks for the reply. I will take a look at the tutorials. I'm not trying to offend why my question on OSG. I'm not really doing anything super intensive. I wrote a C++ application to cluster 3d space trajectories, and I just want to output the generated clusters (from a plain text file). I don't wanna be doing overkill on this, I just want something quick and easy I suppose. Thanks once again. ------------------ Read this topic online here: http://forum.openscenegraph.org/viewtopic.php?p=40172#40172 _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
