Irrlicht Engine - A free open source 3D engine

Welcome to the Irrlicht Engine

The Irrlicht Engine is an open source realtime 3D engine written in C++. It is cross-platform, using D3D, OpenGL and its own software renderers. OpenGL-ES2 and WebGL renderers are also in development. It is a stable library which has been worked on for nearly 2 decades. We've got a huge community and Irrlicht is used by hobbyists and professional companies alike. You can find enhancements for it all over the web, like alternative terrain renderers, portal renderers, exporters, world layers, tutorials, editors, language bindings and so on. And best of all: It's completely free.

28-Dec-05Irrlicht Engine development more open now

I’m glad to announce that there are several changes in the software development process of Irrlicht:

  • Irrlicht now is accessable via CVS. You can grab the latest development version of the engine directly as described in this FAQ entry and it is also possible to browse it via html.
  • We’ve now got an Irrlicht Engine team, I’ve updated the author page. If you would like to join the team, please take a look at the FAQ entry. Currently, we would be glad to find someone to create and maintain a Mac port, for example (also mentioned in the FAQ entry).
  • I’ve written some basic Irrlicht coding rules you may want to look at, if you want your additions to be merged with the development code.

And last, I’ve finally managed to upload the version 0.14.0 API documentation.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News | Comments Off on Irrlicht Engine development more open now

06-Dec-05New Irrlicht related project & development video

I’ve added a new project using Irrlicht to the screenshots section. It is named Bloodgiver and is a Gothic style RPG with lots of NPCs and (polish) dialogs, developed by Delan. The game is finished and can be downloaded and played freely.

Some other news: Ing. Apfelbaum created a short video showing a WIP version of Irrlicht with an interesting new feature.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Projects | Comments Off on New Irrlicht related project & development video

01-Dec-05Irrlicht 0.14.0 released!

I released the new version of Irrlicht, version 0.14.0. That’s right the last version was 0.12.0, and I skipped one number. There are multiple reasons for this, but to keep it short: There are so much great new features and enhancements in this new version that it is nearly worth two version numbers. And after all, it has been a long time since the 0.12.0 release. 🙂 So, here’s an short overview of the new stuff, have fun:

  • Irrlicht now includes a full featured, complete software rasterizer. It is able to do everything you need: correct 3d clipping, perspective correct texture mapping, sub pixel correctness, bilinear texel filtering, huge material support and more. It is named Apfelbaum Software Renderer and was contributed by Thomas Alten, thanks a lot! This makes Irrlicht now one of the few usable open source 3D software rasterizers.
  • Highly improved rendering quality. Internal convertions, loading and filtering precision has been improved.
  • Visual Studio 2005 support. (Also as Express edition)
  • 2D drawing support in textures. You can for example render 2D user interfaces in 3D with that.
  • Anisotropic filtering.
  • Irrlicht.NET now supports shaders: HLSL, GLSL, VS, PS, Fragment & Vertex programs. Everything you’ll ever need.
  • Improved and faster terrain rendering (thanks to Spintz!)
  • Lots of bugfixes
  • Revised tutorials and documentation
  • And more goodies like improved GLSL support, directional lights, alpha channel buttons, better dmf loading and and and.

For a complete list, please take a look at the changes.txt file. Happy downloading. Update: If you are a Linux user and have some problems, you’ll find some solutions in the wiki, thx to saigumi.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Releases | Comments Off on Irrlicht 0.14.0 released!

20-Nov-05Irrlicht User Map

There is a world map for Irrlicht users at frappr.com. Lots of people already added themselves, now what about you? Would be interesting. No registration required.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News | Comments Off on Irrlicht User Map

12-Nov-05irrXML 1.2 released

I just released irrXML 1.2, the xml parser used by Irrlicht. This release adds support for CDATA sections and some small bug fixes and improvements. Of course, irrXML 1.2 will be also part of the next Irrlicht Engine release.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Projects | Comments Off on irrXML 1.2 released

01-Nov-05Irrlicht related news

Some other new Irrlicht related websites and projects:

  • The latest release of the great C++ IDE Code::Blocks includes an Irrlicht project wizard.
  • Dhenton created a website providing some Irrlicht compatible recources like .x files, physics demos and more.
  • Another website extends Irrlicht with controls like a chat box control, an expanded tab control, edit box and scrollbar.
  • Irrwizard™ is an Irrlicht project creation wizard which produces a game project skelleton based on the Irrlicht rendering engine. It creates all the necessary source code, project files and dll’s at the click of a few buttons.

I also updated the development page with the current progress.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Projects | Comments Off on Irrlicht related news

29-Oct-05Updates

I did several website updates:

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Projects | Comments Off on Updates

10-Oct-05Free Irrlicht Project hosting & other news

Stonefish Entertainment and Thunderbolt Tactical are providing hosting packages for any Irrlicht projects that wish to have a web presence. You will get 50 MB webspace and FTP access to it, MySQL, PHP, CGI, XML, and Frontpage support is options. For details, see this thread in the irrlicht forum or the announcement in the stonefish forum and the details.

Some other news:

  • Abusoft created an extension to Irrlicht which makes it possible to modify bones of .x models in Irrlicht during runtime, for example for the creation of rag dolls.
  • Escaptor released version 0.3 of his RAD tool for Irrlicht which makes it possible to edit lots of scene nodes, animators and effect Irrlicht offers visually.
By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Projects | Comments Off on Free Irrlicht Project hosting & other news

09-Sep-05RABCAT engine featuring Irrlicht

I added another project to the screenshots of projects using Irrlicht page. This time it is the RABCAT Engine which is multifunctional game engine based on Irrlicht. There is also a video showing RABCAT engine in action.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Projects | Comments Off on RABCAT engine featuring Irrlicht

04-Sep-05Compatibility with Code::Blocks, BlizMax and more

Some short updates:

  • Afecelis wrote a detailed tutorial on how to compile Irrlicht using Code::Blocks. I added it to the tutorials section, and you can read it here. In addition, it lools like an Irrlicht project template has been added to CVS version of the Code::Blocks IDE.
  • Added a link to gg.Irrlicht / gg.IrrBMAX, an Irrlicht wrapper for BlizMax, created by garritt.
  • Jirr, an Irrlicht bindng for Java has been released in version 0.5. It now supports the latest version of Irrlicht and D3D.
By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Projects | Comments Off on Compatibility with Code::Blocks, BlizMax and more