I’ve just finished adding oriented billboard support, which allows users to define the type of billboard orientation they want for their particle systems.
The traditional billboard is always perpendicular to the camera, however this is only useful for spherical objects such as flares, clouds etc, it looks wrong on more linear objects like laser fire. So now OGRE lets you choose between 3 billboard types: ‘point’ for traditional billboards, and ‘oriented’ for those which still try to face the camera but have a base Y axis which they will never vary from. This core axis can either be the motion axis of the individual particles, or a common fixed axis (for efficiency where you know this axis is not going to change, e.g. in falling rain where there is no wind).
I’ve updated the screenshots page with a couple of images showing you what I mean. Hope you like them.
I have a couple of culling bugs to resolve (things occasionally getting culled when they shouldn’t be), then I’ll be doing a snapshot
release for general download. As usual, CVS guys can get it right now to play with. Oh, and if you wondered what an OGRE particle definition looks like, have a look at the particle script used to define the particle systems used in the images: View Particle Script