Ogre material scripts; how do I give a technique multiple lod_indexes?

Posted by BlueNovember on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by BlueNovember
Published on 2010-01-05T15:44:13Z Indexed on 2010/04/16 14:33 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 250

Filed under:
|
|

I have an Ogre material script that defines 4 rendering techniques. 1 using GLSL shaders, then 3 others that just use textures of different resolutions.
I want to use the GLSL shader unconditionally if the graphics card supports it, and the other 3 textures depending on camera distance.

At the moment my script is;

material foo
{
lod_distances 1600 2000

technique shaders
{
     lod_index 0
     lod_index 1
     lod_index 2

     //various passes here
}

technique high_res {
     lod_index 0
     //various passes here
}

technique medium_res {
     lod_index 1
     //various passes here
}

technique low_res {
     lod_index 2
     //various passes here
}


Extra information

The Ogre manual says;

Increasing indexes denote lower levels of detail

You can (and often will) assign more than one technique to the same LOD index, what this means is that OGRE will pick the best technique of the ones listed at the same LOD index.

OGRE determines which one is 'best' by which one is listed first.

Currently, on a machine supporting the GLSL version I am using, the script behaves as follows;

  • Camera > 2000 : Shader technique
  • Camera >1600 <= 2000 : Medium
  • Camera <= 1600 : High

If I change the lod order in shader technique to

{
     lod_index 2
     lod_index 1
     lod_index 0
}

The behaviour becomes;

  • Camera > 2000 : Low
  • Camera >1600 <= 2000 : Medium
  • Camera <= 1600 : Shader

implying only the latest lod_index is used.


If I change it to

lod_index 0 1 2

It shouts at me

 Compiler error: fewer parameters expected in foo.material(#): lod_index only supports 1 argument

So how do I specify a technique to have 3 lod_indexes?

Duplication works;

technique shaders
{
     lod_index 0
     //various passes here
}


technique shaders1
{
     lod_index 1
     //passes repeated here
}


technique shaders2
{
     lod_index 2
     //passes repeated here
}

...but it's ugly.

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about graphics

Related posts about ogre