I want Irrlicht, they want Ogre

[King Kadelfek]

Hello, I'm a french student from Supinfogame, a video game school.
(sorry for my mistakes)

I don't want to launch another war about Irrlicht vs Ogre, but I have a problem about this topic.


I'm a programmer, and I really would like to use Irrlicht.
But the other members from our team saw some Ogre screenshots, so... they want me to use Ogre to program the game.


So, I'm looking for screenshots to convince them that Irrlicht can do some nice things too.

I found the "screenshot of the month winners" gallerie :
http://sourceforge.net/apps/gallery/irrlicht
But it's still less beautiful, less detailled than anything on Ogre, Unity, Panda and so on.

So, what ? Irrlicht can't really do better graphisms ?
Or it's just because the main part of the Irrlicht users are programmers rather than graphists ?
(I know how look games made by programmers, I watched mines)


Please, tell me than Irrlicht is able to do great things !

[randomMesh]

Well, it all depends on the artwork. If you render a crappy model with Ogre, it doesn't automatically become beautiful.

And if you use the MVC pattern in your app, 3d engines are easily exchangeable.

[Lonesome Ducky]

I agree with randomMesh. Plus, Ogre has the benefit of a much larger community, and probably more professionals, which would obviously lead to more high quality screenshots. I haven't tried Ogre before, so that's all I can say to help. Although I know a lot of people here who can get into a heated discussion over it

[hybrid]

Could you mention a few screenshots from Ogre, which look that much better? Maybe it's just a cetain effect that you're looking for? IMHO, the gallery shows already a very broad range of different renderings in very high quality.

[King Kadelfek]

The firsts I found :

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2621/397 ... ced531.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2494/391 ... 94e692.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2724/412 ... ec583a.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3424/338 ... f282_o.jpg

I know, it's professionnal stuff. But it's nearly impossible to find professionnal-looking stuff made with Irrlicht.


Made with Irrlicht :

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/images/ ... ream_3.jpg
This one looks cool, but there is only a few polygons, and no anti-aliasing.

I suppose the best screenshots are
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/screens ... jects.html

A lot of games made with Irrlicht look like 90's games.
Or worse.
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/images/sotw/009l.jpg

Ok, Irrlicht can do better stuff than this (as seen in the screenshots winners gallerie).


What I'm afraid of, is that Irrlicht is far, far less powerful than any other 3D engine.

There are a lot of beautiful 3D models on the net. But all 3D stuff using by Irrlicht developpers look like Playstation 1 assets. Even if Irrlicht developpers are not 3D creators, why don't we see better 3D assets ?

Is it because they don't want to use them, or because Irrlicht can't display them ?


What about this one ?

http://sourceforge.net/apps/gallery/irr ... itemId=601

Is it real time animated ? (by example)

-

I'm thinking that if I can't find good looking stuff made with Irrlicht, it's because :
- nobody tries to do it
or
- nobody can do it

So, I'm thinking : "if I managed to do something as good as stuff made by people working for years on Irrlicht, it will still not be sufficiently beautiful".
I'm not talking creating a super 3D engine from Irrlicht. Just use beautiful 3D assets made with 3DS Max.

[stefbuet]

A 3D engine won't make your objects better, there is no engine with "MakeItMoreBeautifull" functions, it'll be more about your model/texture/animation/shader quality, your work.

AND NOW : say Hello to an Ogre project : It's pretty cool, isn't it?

[randomMesh]

AND NOW : say Hello to an Ogre project : It's pretty cool, isn't it?

It's soooo beautiful.

[hybrid]

Ok, I guess we have had enough of this trolling discussion. As we can see from the previous pictures, both engines can display the same quality. Moreover, Irrlicht will be able to display the exact same quality by using the same models and same shaders as seen in the shots from other engines.
Also make sure not to compare with examples that require several thousand dollars of licensing or modelling costs (the SpeedTree images are a good example).
So unless you will switch into discussing proper engine usage for your next replies here, this thread will be closed for excessive trolling. So mind your next reply.

[King Kadelfek]

@ stefbuet
I miss 2 of the 4 pictures you showed.
I will show them to the rest of the team.


@ hybrid
I'm sorry I was'nt trolling. Rather panicing. ^_^'
It's just that we have a talented 2D graphist for our concept arts, and he started to say that Ogre looks beautifuller, and looks having better anti-aliasing and so on.

Moreover, Irrlicht will be able to display the exact same quality by using the same models and same shaders as seen in the shots from other engines.

Ok, it answers mostly of the questions my friends asked me.

Also make sure not to compare with examples that require several thousand dollars of licensing or modelling costs (the SpeedTree images are a good example).

Yes, I was pretty sure there was something like that.

So unless you will switch into discussing proper engine usage for your next replies here, this thread will be closed for excessive trolling. So mind your next reply.

Ok, I would like to have some informations about the best way to develop our game.

Here is our schema :




Here is our concept art :


click here to enlarge



As you can see, it's an isometric 3D game.
The camera will be not be allowed to rotate, but the player will be able to zoom in and out, and move the camera up-down and right-left as in a RTS.

The moutain is computer generated with assembled 3D tiles (modelized with 3DS Max).



What next ?

I'm looking for isometric games (at least one) made with Irrlicht. I found one in the samples, but the decor is just a picture.

It's to be sure that we will be able to make a game looking like we want before attempting to do it with Irrlicht.



Thank you in advance if you can give us a name or a link.
And sorry for being a troll.

[Halifax]

At the end of the day you can push out the same pixels to the screen with Irrlicht as you can with Ogre. A number of things should contribute to your choice for which engine to use, including but not limited to: your experience with the engine, your experience with general graphics programming theory, your proficiency with C++, etc.

Now, holding all other variables equal, Ogre is the better engine. Out of the box it is leaps and bounds above Irrlicht. Simple as that.

[CuteAlien]

@Kadelfek: I have a few more screenshots here: http://www.irrgheist.com/hc2pt.htm
Now I don't say those shots compete already with the shots you posted above, but then again we're not yet at the limits of the Irrlicht engine so far. For example we just start out adding shaders. The problem with making stuff look really nice is simply that it does cost a lot more time and so far it was more important for me to invest that time in other areas (always expect that you will have to invest a lot more time than you ever expect on the GUI which will leave you with nearly no time at all to improve the looks of the 3D stuff. I'm sadly not joking).

My experience doing that game (and other projects) is that Irrlicht is really easy to use. Which was nice for me simply because this was the first game where I did the 3D coding (I had a decade of working at games before, but always in other areas like AI where you only think of the geometry and not about how it looks). Also the code is clear enough that I could usually adapt the engine whenever I needed to do that.

There are certainly areas where I hope we can improve the engine further, but so far (3 years now) I did not regret using Irrlicht.

[King Kadelfek]

A number of things should contribute to your choice for which engine to use, including but not limited to: your experience with the engine, your experience with general graphics programming theory, your proficiency with C++, etc.

I have a great experience as 2D programmer and Ruby. I know there is a binding (IrrRuby), but sadly there are no updates since 2005...

we're not yet at the limits of the Irrlicht engine so far

Ok, it's important to know this. I saw your screenshot, they seemed to be fairly good compare to some projects. I suppose you spend a lot of time on it ?

The problem with making stuff look really nice is simply that it does cost a lot more time and so far it was more important for me to invest that time in other areas

We will have something like 4 3DS Max users, and only 2 programmers. I'm looking for a way to do the maximum of the work on 3ds rather than programming it on Irrlicht.
This point is very important. But I don't know a lot of things about this.

For a human, by example, if you want to make a walk animation, you make it on 3DS.
But for a realistic walk animation (the human feet don't slip on the floor), how can we do this ? It can be done on 3DS, or I will have to set this in Irrlicht ?

I just finish the Panda 3D "Hello world" tutorial. And I had to write by myself the moments when the panda stops to avoid his feet be sliping on the floor.

What about Irrlicht and 3DS Max ?

always expect that you will have to invest a lot more time than you ever expect on the GUI

:\
I created my own GUI for Ruby in order to avoid this kind of problems, I understand what you are talking about...

My experience doing that game (and other projects) is that Irrlicht is really easy to use.

And it's why I would like to use it. I'm still doing the Panda 3D tutorial right now, and it looks a bit hard to understand.

I really enjoy the "Irrlicht philosophy", such as being able to handle 3ds format, in order to accelerate development.


For our game, I think we could use precalculated rendering. I'm not talking about using png files stored on the hard drive. I'm thinking about create 2D sprites in the RAM during loading screen to increase game capacities.
I made it for a 3D game engine I wrote in Ruby, and it works.

I'm not saying I will do it. I'm just saying it could be a "last chance solution" if our 3D models are too heavy (or badly modelised) for the game to correctly run.

[sudi]

For a human, by example, if you want to make a walk animation, you make it on 3DS.
But for a realistic walk animation (the human feet don't slip on the floor), how can we do this ? It can be done on 3DS, or I will have to set this in Irrlicht ?

I just finish the Panda 3D "Hello world" tutorial. And I had to write by myself the moments when the panda stops to avoid his feet be sliping on the floor.

What about Irrlicht and 3DS Max ?

Could you rephrase that question? i don't really get what you are trying to ask. But i guess you mean that stoping the walk animation and stopping motion should go hand in hand. well there are several ways to achieve this. one is to make a transition animation from walking to whatever else or if it is enough animation blending.

[CuteAlien]

For a human, by example, if you want to make a walk animation, you make it on 3DS.
But for a realistic walk animation (the human feet don't slip on the floor), how can we do this ? It can be done on 3DS, or I will have to set this in Irrlicht ?

Hm, more of a question for artists. I think the trick is probably to make sure animation speed of the feet does fit the movement of the model in a room.

But maybe just do a few models with the stuff you need in your modeling application and export them in a few formats. Then try the tools that are probably coming with each engine to check-out how they are looking. For Irrlicht the tool to check-out models fast is the meshviewer (example 09). And maybe take a quick look at the other example to get a feeling for each engine.

Deciding on an engine is always hard. Although I guess that probably all of the engines will do what you need. Also - tell your artists to figure out what exactly makes the screenshots look good or bad. Before they manage to tell what the difference is they will probably not be able to produce the stuff that looks good.

[DtD]

Basically: Irrlicht's current community is more programmer based and doesn't boast as many commercial projects. So we have less impressive screen shots to boast.

As said several times, what makes it look good is not a question of the engine, but the artists.

~DtD