History: -Billboard

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Billboard - A flat square polygon (2 triangles) for high speed displaying of 2D textures. Mostly the face points to the camera. Often it's also called sprite, although this not right in historical context (see Wikipedia article).

To make one, you first have to make a BillboardSet. Then, the billboards can be added to it on a given position. The BillboardSet is a {LEX()}MovableObject{LEX} and should therefore be added to a {LEX()}SceneNode{LEX}.

Billboards can be used e.g. to create a {LEX()}HUD{LEX} (heads up display) for characters.

On right side is an example usage (from the Ogre game APOX).

A billboard used for a green circle marker. The face doesn't point to the camera - the billboard is parallel to the terrain. It's not rendered on top (behind the helicopter model). For this the RenderQueue was modified and maybe some material settings were changed (Depth Check ON/OFF, Depth Write ON/OFF, etc.). The usage of billboards supports high performance. An alternative would be to use Projective Decals which renders an additional layer to a texture. (But this would be slower, when you need to update it's size/position for each frame.)

See Also

Example how to add to a scene MOGRE MovableText by Billboards - shows text, clamped to a SceneNode Example for Mogre Billboards, Materials and Lights Billboard Class Reference in API BillboardSet Class Reference in API SpriteManager2d | MOGRE SpriteManager2d - code snippet An advanced description is in the book Pro OGRE 3D Programming (ISBN 1-59059-710-9) OgreSprites - similar, but without use of Billboard MovableText | MOGRE MovableText | MovableTextOverlay - similar, but only for text ManualObject 2D {LEX()}Overlay{LEX} 2.5D graphics at Wikipedia Billboarding (Direct3D 9) at MSDN

{WIKIPEDIA(page="Sprite (computer graphics)")/}