modern 3d in 2d adventure. irrlicht the right engine?

[FogGobbler]

Hi!
1. I was wondering if the irrlicht-engine is the right one for me. I want to create a classical (but modern) point & click adventure game with 2D prerendred backgrounds and 3d characters (like syberia 2). I also want nice light effects, shadows, particle effects like smoke.

2 Is this relativly easy to do with the irrlicht engine, or should i look for alternatives. I gather, there isn´t a script engine built in, or am I wrong?

3. Are there any tutorials about combining 2d with 3d characters?

4. If there isn´t a script engine, which one should I use for my my project and can it easily be "integrated" into irrlicht?

thanks,
oli

[Electron]

1) the enginecan do all those things,though I know nothing about mixing 2D and 3D. Beware that shadows in irrlicht need serious work, they are very slow (where would they fall in a 2D world anyway)

2) I doubt you'll find an easier 3d engine to use, though I dunno about mixing 2d and 3d

3) not that I know of.

4) what exactly do you mean by a script engine? Only scripting I'm familiar with is AI scripting, whcih is totally seperate from rendering, thus obviously integratable.

[FogGobbler]

Hi, again!

Well, i´m, glad to hear that irrlicht is the right engine.

but.. i´m confused ..again

1. as mentioned i want a combination of 2d backgrounds and a 3d character. this character should throw a shadow (speed isn´t that vital and i´m sure the engine is cable of creating one fast shadow) onto (see the adventure syberia 2 just as an example of what i mean) the background..but..ehm.. can i throw a shadow onto a bitmap background or does it have to be a polygon with a texture.. so guys, how you do it?

2. how do i get the character to walk behind things? do i have to have a simplfied mesh "behind" the background for calculation or are there other possibilities?

sorry for asking so many question, but i want to get on..

thanks, oli

[Tyn]

Yes, you can produce pre-rendered 2D backgrounds in Irrlicht.What you do is use a billboard, which is an image that always faces the camera no matter what way you look at it. It is basically a 3D box with a Z value of 0 that rotates when the camera faces it. It gives a very good replication of a 2D image, you could use it for characters or anything else you want to do.

[thesmileman]

Just make sure that you make your images is multiples of 2. Irrlicht does not handle images well that are not multiples of 2.