From SOFAWiki

Using Ogre Viewer

Ogre is "one of the most popular open-source graphics rendering engines". It is possible to use it within Sofa very easily.

1. Download and Install Ogre
2. Open the config file SOFA/share/config/plugins.cfg
3. Specify the path where is located the library
4. Launch sofaConfiguration
   • Find the option SOFA_GUI_QTOGREVIEWER inside the Viewers options, and activate it.
   • ONLY if you don't use Windows specify OGRE_INCLUDE_PATH, the Path where the headers of Ogre are located.
   • Save and Update your configuration
5. Compile Sofa
6. To test it, launch Sofa with the option g: runSofa -g ogre. If you launch Sofa directly with an other viewer, you can change the viewer by using the menu View->OGRE

Using Shaders

To add a shader to your OgreVisualModel you have to:

• specify the shader with the Data: materialOgre. Ogre engine handles shaders written in HLSL, GLSL, CG.
• if your shader needs some parameters, use the component OgreShaderParameter. You have to specify the entry point of your custom parameter. To ease the parametrization, we set by default the first 4 entries to be the ambient(1), diffuse(2), specular(3) color, and shininess(4) of the material. See the Fur shader for example: it takes 2 parameters:
  • the Fur length
  • The light coefficient for the fur.

Using Compositors

Ogre provides a very easy way to do compositing effects: we add to the Ogre Viewer a quick interface to manipulate them. BR See next for some of the effects available:

It is also easy to create new effects, as it relies on scripts. Just create a new Compositor (see in $SOFA/share/materials/scripts/Examples.compositor), and bind the different render target to your custom shader. You can enable these effects for a given scene using the component OgreViewerSetting. Specifiy the data compositors, which is a vector of string, and these effects will we active with your scene.

See the example scene $SOFA/examples/Sandbox/OgreShaderDemo.scn for a full use of OgreViewer (shaders + custom parameters + texture specifications + compositing effects)