The following is a very basic intro of how to get the OSG going under Linux, FreeBSD, IRIX, Windows and Mac. Each intro mentions OpenSceneGraph-Data, it is recommended that you also download it alongside this source distribution. The scene graph depends upon Standard C++, STL and OpenGL so you need a C++ compiler up to the task and OpenGL or Mesa installed. The viewer depends upon GLUT which you'll need to download and install from the GLUT website. The OSG has it own native ascii file format, and .rgb image reader inbuilt which allows you read the example data with any dependencies other than C++, STL and OpenGL. The OSG also has a set of plug-ins which support non-native 3d database and image formats, several have no dependencies on external libraries (flt,3ds,obj, lwo,dw, tga & pic), while others (pfb,jpeg,gif,tiff) require other libraries to be installed to compile them. If you don't already have them installed then don't worry, you'll still be able to use the OSG. The core osg library and viewer has been designed to load the plug-ins at run-time only and if they are required to load a specific data set. If you don't need them for your datasets then it won't matter that you haven't been able to compile all the plug-ins. A full list of dependencies and where to download the required libraries are listed in the index.html. If you're coming across the OSG for the first time and want to get started quickly, go right ahead and follow the compilation instructions. You can always later download the libraries which the plug-ins require if you eventually need them. If you haven't already checked it out, for a list of distribution contents, contacts and links to documentation check out index.html. Environmental settings under Unix --------------------------------- These enviromental settings are useful to help develop with an entirely local copy of the osg. However, once you've done a make install you can make do without all of these, although OSGFILEPATH is still useful as the osgDB library uses it for picking locating datafiles. Add the following to your .cshrc : setenv OSGHOME setenv OSGDATA setenv OSGFILEPATH ./:${OSGDATA}:${OSGDATA}/Images: setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH ${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:${OSGHOME}/lib setenv PATH ${PATH}:${OSGHOME}/bin Or the following if you're using a sh compatible shell : export OSGHOME= export OSGDATA= export OSGFILEPATH=./:${OSGDATA}:${OSGDATA}/Images: export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:${OSGHOME}/lib export PATH=${PATH}:${OSGHOME}/bin note: under IRIX you'll need to use LD_LIBRARYN32_PATH instead of LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Compiling under Linux --------------------- To compile, from the OSG root directory, type: make Note, make should automatically detect linux and copy the Make/makerules.linux and Make/makedefs.linux over the default Make/makerules and Make/makedefs. If autodetection does not work type 'make linux'. And if you wish to install the OSG to /usr/include/ & /usr/lib then su root, and type: make install or make instlinks To get full details of make options, type: make help Compiling under FreeBSD ----------------------- To compile, from the OSG root directory, type : make freebsd And if you wish to install the OSG to /usr/include/ & /usr/lib then su root, and type: make install or make instlinks To get full details of make options, type: make help Compiling under IRIX -------------------- When setting up environmental variables, specified above, LD_LIBRARY_PATH should of course be replaced by LD_LIBRARYN32_PATH. Since the OSG uses Standard C++ features such as STL it is important to have an up to date version of the MIPSPro compilers. The library has been tested under MIPSPro7.3 & MIPSPro7.2.1, and *may* compile under previous versions but has yet to be tested. It is recommended to use MIPSPro7.3.1.1m. To compile, from the OSG root directory, type : make Note, make should automatically detect IRIX and copy the Make/makerules.irix.std and Make/makedefs.irix.std over the default Make/makerules and Make/makedefs. If autodetection does not work type 'make irix' for MIPSPro7.3 or 'make irix.old' for MIPSPro7.2.1 and before. And if you wish to install the OSG to /usr/include/ & /usr/lib then su root, and type: make install or make instlinks To get full details of make options, type: make help Compiling under Windows ----------------------- The Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 workspace file is VisualStudio.dsw located in the VisualStudio\ below the OSG this root directory. The OSG will compile with the basic VisualC++6.0, but its recommended that you use Service Pack 4 to fix MS compiler bugs which affect the OSG. Even Service Pack 4 does not completely fix MSVC bugs associated with STL, so it is recommended that you also use STLPort which can be downloaded from http://www.stlport.org since they actually know how to write a STL library and have done a rather good job at it. The OSG is composed of a number of libraries and executables, to get running you'll need at least to compile osg,osgUtil,osgDB,osgGLUT, dot_osg and sgv. The rest of the libraries and executables are optional and can be compiled if you need them. It may well be simplest to do a batch build of all the libraries and executables in the distribution, some of the plug-ins which support non native file formats may not compile due to dependencies on other libraries (such as libpng), you can ignore these compilation errors unless you need to load the related file types. To execute the viewer the file path for the .dll's and .exe, both compiled into the OSG's bin directory, need to be setup, such as by adding the PATH to your autoexec.bat, its also useful to add the OSGFILEPATH to your autoexec.bat to help the location of datafiles. For example : SET OSGFILEPATH=D:\OpenSceneGraph-Data;D:\OpenSceneGraph-Data\Images SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\Oglsdk\lib;D:\osg-0.8.40\bin; To help compilation of the image reader plugins, various image libraries have been zipped up for your convienice, your find these on the OSG release download directory. Compiling under MacOS 9 ----------------------- The Microwerks Codewarrior workspace files can be found under the Microwerks directory. Further details to be fleshed out since Mac port is in its early stages and is not uptodate with the current release. To get it compiling you will have to use these Codewarrior files as a starting place. If you get it running and have time to maintian the port please email robert@openscenegraph.org. Compiling under MacOS X (instructions written by Phil Atkin) ------------------------------------------------------------ For anyone who's ever used a Unix box for development it really is so simple it's insane. You need to have installed the Developer tools from the CD that comes for free with OS X. This gives you compilers, headers, frameworks - stuff like GLUT and Carbon for developers. Everything is done command-line, so you need to get to the underlying OS rather than the Aqua gloss. The Mac comes with an app in Applications/Utilities called Terminal - open up any Finder window (e.g double-click on your hard disk icon), click on the Applications icon at the top right of the window, then click on the Utilities folder to get access to all the grubby apps which give away the real OS roots underneath the shiny paintwork. Anyone developing will need Terminal so much they should put it in their Dock. You do that by grabbing the icon of the app in the Utilities folder and dragging it to the bottom of your screen, at which point the other app icons in the Dock slide away to leave a gap which when you release the mouse button leaves Terminal permanently available, just a mouse click away on your desktop. When you start Terminal it brings you up a csh running under Darwin (which is the BSD-with-knobs-on that underlies OS X), and does a cd to ~ (otherwise /Users/username of whoever you are logged in as, as far as the Finder in OS X is concerned you are in the Users/username folder of the harddisk the machine booted from). Then you are in Unix land, and it's all very familiar. You will need a .cshrc file with $OSGHOME (as in your instructions), and this is a filename that the Mac won't let you see from the Finder or in fact generate from an app, so I used vi to create that. Then I just went cd $OSGHOME make clean make macosx And it sounds too good to be true but it is that simple. It's worth doing some editing on the Makefiles in the Plugins and Demos directories so that it only tries to build a subset, otherwise the developer will have to dig out the support projects like jpeg etc. I have only built up to now sgv, hangglide, osgcube, osgreflect, osgviews and in the Plugins have built osg rgb 3ds and a couple others - will check and get back to you. Tricky bit - Installing the libdl.a is more trouble, as you have to enable the root account on the machine, which by default is switched off as the machines ship for security reasons. Rather than typing in and risking error through paraphrase, here is a link to a site which tells you how to do this - http://www.macos.utah.edu/Documentation/macosx/security/enablerootuser.html Or alternately http://www.thinkmacintosh.com/osxfaq.html One you have a root account enabled, you have to su root you cd to the directory which the Fink installer generates, and it puts libdl.a and the associated .h files in sensible system places so the compiler just finds them. There is one oddball problem - if you rely on Path to find the resulting executables, a weird Core Graphics error occurs - so even though I set up my path to include $(OSGHOME)/bin, and when I cd to $OSGHOME and type for example hangglide, the application starts fine (so it is in the path), but at the point it tries to use GLUT to open a window it falls over with a CGS error (which is I think Core Graphics System). If you explicitly go bin/hangglide it works fine. Weird, it may be an OS X 10.04 issue which is gone in 10.1 or it may be a weirdy in the Mac GLUT implementation, but forewarned is forearmed. Running the demos ----------------- To run the viewer demo type (you made need to type rehash first under Unix) : sgv dumptruck.osg sgv cow.osg sgv e-s-bike.osg sgv lz.rgb sgv Spinnercar.flt sgv Alley.3ds sgv town_ogl_pfi.pfb Other run other demos type osgcube or hangglide hangglide master.flt or osgreflect cow.osg or osgconv Alley.3ds Alley.osg or osgtexture lz.rgb tree.rgb or osgimpostor cow.osg or osgviews glider.osg (Note: the file is picked up by checking the directories pointed to by $OSGFILEPATH) Plug-in dependencies -------------------- You may have compile errors if you don't have all the required libraries, especially for the plugins. As long as the core libraries osg, osgUtl, osgGLUT and sgv have compiled you won't have any problems running the osg itself but may not be able to use some non-native data formats. To get the problematic plugins working you may need to download support libraries such as libtiff, libjpeg etc. For further details see index.html.