New to Irrlicht

[sabino]

Hello everyone, I'm new in this forum. I'm a student and currently learning C++. I would like to study very well this beatiful language and start developing 3D applications. My project is a game about Tux that I would release as open source. People on the web says that Irrlicht is very easy to use, I gave a look in the API documentation and seems very clean. Irrlicht also offers irrEdit, that can export worlds and level for this library. What libraries do I need other than irrLicht? This library can give me rendering, world editing, animation, timer, serialization and GUI. The only thing I need is audio and input, right? I've an old PC (Sapphire X1550 + Pentium), can I anyway develop without using shaders?
Thank you for the answers.

[thanhle]

Yes you can achieve it without using shader.
But you need dedication and hard work. Never give up .
3D drafting and texturing can take a long time. I think it is better to get the logic/algorithms working first before enhancing the graphic quality.

You need some basic math and maybe how matrix operation works.

After you are proficient with the language and implementing advance feature, please remember to give us some tips .

regards
thanh

[sabino]

Thank you thanh for your answer.
My project is not so complex. Tux (the protagonist) has only to explore the levels and find objects. I've heard that it's easy to use levels (just import the .irr file). I'm mainly a Blender 3d modeler , so, can I export textured models to Irrlicht so I haven't to apply textures via C++?

[sabino]

And, isn't Irrlicht improved anymore? On the homepage, the last news is from 2013. Did the creator of Irrlicht move his business to CopperCube?

[CuteAlien]

Just experiment around with the exporter. Irrlicht comes with a modelviewer (example 09) so you can look how stuff looks in there after import. For export from Blender I recommend .obj files for static models and b3d for animated models using the b3d exporter from the supertuxkart guys: https://sourceforge.net/p/supertuxkart/ ... lender_25/

Irrlicht is still improved, see: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/forum/v ... =2&t=50582
Niko hasn't been active with Irrlicht development for a long time (not in the last 7 years I've been using Irrlicht), for the last years Hybrid was the main programmer. We should probably update our "Authors" section on the homepage some day and show who's active and who isn't.

[sabino]

Thank you CuteAlien! Would you recommend Irrlicht to a 16-years old student? I am going to take game development seriously, and get into the community to help and to be helped. I also hope that a day I will be able to create a plugin or an useful library and distribute it.
How much easy is Irrlicht in your opinion?

[sabino]

I also would like to say "Thank you" to the Irrlicht team for offering their software for free. :3

[CuteAlien]

I really can't tell :-) I found Irrlicht rather easy to use when I started with it. But it took me a while to get used to 3D programming. Learning c++ and 3D programming at the same time might not be the easiest thing to do. I'd probably start out with 2D games. You can also use Irrlicht for that, but I think there might be better 2D libs out there. But if you really try 3D stuff right at the start then I see Irrlicht as a good choice. Especially as it comes with source-code so you can even learn how stuff really works by looking at engine sources.

Start by looking at the example source-codes. If you can figure those out you might get along with the engine.

[sabino]

I'm planning to use these libraries:
Irrlicht: 3d graphics, animation, GUI, serialization.
SFML: input
Audio: irrKlang, free for non commercial use.
What else do I need?

[CuteAlien]

Always depends on your game, but that's probably sufficient.

[hendu]

You don't really need a separate input library unless you need something advanced, irr can use keyboards, mice, and normal joysticks/controllers fine.

[sabino]

Oh, thank you hendu