Static geometry

I might just have missed something, but shouldn't there be support for static objects in the oSceneLoaderLib?

I added some code and got it working, not the most beautiful code maybe, but I'm also pretty new to both Ogre and the StaticGeometry.

This is what I did:
- Added a new property to the <entity>-element called "Static" which I set to yes/no
- Also added a "StaticGroup" as a property to <entity>
- Added a new method (addSceneNodeToStaticGeometry) that took care of adding the SceneNode to the static geometry group specified in "StaticGroup"
- Added a check in createNode() and called on addSceneNodeToStaticGeometry if "Static" was set to "yes"
- Did a build() on all StaticGeometrys for the sceneManager we created when loading the osm-file

I'm sure there's a lot left to do... don't even know if this is a good solution.
But I thought it was important enough to make a post about it.

You would of course need to add the possibility to set objects as static in 3dsmax before you export.

That is great news, excellent job

Static Geometry support is planned for a later release, but if you need it (and it seems you need it ) we will add a preliminary support in the next update this week along with static region settings

Thanks a lot for the feedback!
Would be great if you could add that support

My suggestion is that you add something like
<static static="yes" group="groupName" /> to the entity-element.
I guess that would look better than adding them as properties for <entity>?

Also don't know if lights can be static, but there's not really much work to be done if they can.

So this is what I did to get the static geometry working.

First I added <static /> to the entity in my osm-file
<oe_scene>
<sceneManager type="1" worldGeometry="terrain.cfg" />
<bkgcolor r="0" g="0" b="1" />
<lightColor r="0.5" g="0.5" b="0.5" />
<shadowTechnique type="0" tex_size="512" tex_count="1">
<color r="0" g="0" b="0" />
</shadowTechnique>
<entities>
<entity name="ThirdHead" hidden="false" filename="OgreHead.mesh" CastShadows="yes" ReceiveShadows="yes">
<position x="0" y="0" z="0" />
<rotation x="0" y="0" z="0" w="-1" />
<scale x="1" y="1" z="1" />
<static isStatic="yes" group="someGroup" />
</entity>
</entities>
</oe_scene>


When we're done adding static objects to the StaticGeometrys in our sceneManager we will need to build them, so I had to store the ones I used somewhere. I guess that there's some way to get a list of the StaticGeometrys from a SceneManager, but I couldn't find it, so I added a queue to OSMScene
std::queue<Ogre::StaticGeometry*> mStaticGeometrys;

Also added a new method to OSMScene that will add a SceneNode to the StaticGeometry group that we specified with "group" in <static />.
This method will also add the StaticGeometry to our SceneManger if it doesn't already exist.
When it does it will also add that StaticGeometry to the queue of StaticGeometrys

// Add a scene node to a static geometry in this->mSceneMgr
void OSMScene::addSceneNodeToStaticGeometry(const char* pStaticGeometryGroupName, Ogre::SceneNode* pSceneNode)
{
// Check that we actually got a string, and that it's not empty
if (pStaticGeometryGroupName == NULL || *pStaticGeometryGroupName == '\0')
{
pStaticGeometryGroupName = "default";
}

try
{
this->mSceneMgr->getStaticGeometry(pStaticGeometryGroupName)->addSceneNode(pSceneNode);
}
catch (...)
{
// There was no StaticGeometry with that name. Create one and then try again.
// The SGs are stored in a queue so that they can be used when we're done adding.
this->mStaticGeometrys.push(this->mSceneMgr->createStaticGeometry(pStaticGeometryGroupName));
this->mSceneMgr->getStaticGeometry(pStaticGeometryGroupName)->addSceneNode(pSceneNode);
}
}


Then I added this code to OSMScene::createNode() (added it between //Rotation and //Notify)
This is the code that will look for <static /> in our osm-file.
If it's found it will check the properties, if not it will just move on to //Notify
// Static
TiXmlElement* staticElem = pElem->FirstChildElement("static");
if (staticElem)
{
try
{
std::string staticIsStatic = staticElem->Attribute("isStatic");

if (staticIsStatic == "yes")
{
const char* ptrStaticGroup = staticElem->Attribute("group");
this->addSceneNodeToStaticGeometry(ptrStaticGroup, pNode);
}
}
catch (...)
{
// Empty catch, isStatic couldn't be found
}
}


Ok, we're almost done! We just need to build all the StaticGeometrys now. Our static SceneNodes won't show if we don't build them, so it's a pretty important part of the progress
Remember that we stored all the StaticGeometrys we used in a queue called mStaticGeometrys? That's what we'll use now.
We don't want to build them before all SceneNodes are added, so we do it in OSMScene::createScene(), right before we "return true;".
// Build all the static geometrys we've stored objects in while we loaded them
while (!this->mStaticGeometrys.empty())
{
StaticGeometry* tempSg = this->mStaticGeometrys.front();
this->mStaticGeometrys.pop();
tempSg->build();
}


I hope some of this might be useful for someone else too, but as I said earlier - there's more to do, I don't know if some lights should be static too...