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.

15-Oct-03Venom & Extenic

Shane Parker is working on ‘Venom’ which is a Irrlicht binding for Perl, Phyton, Ruby, etc. and it sounds very promising. Take a look at the venom homepage, which is also hosted by sourceforge.
But that’s not the only cool news: Fabian Kranen is working on ‘Extenic’. It will be a portable layer on top of Irrlicht, which provides a generic way of managing a complete virtual world.
As always, I’ve added links to these two new projects on the link page.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Projects | Comments Off on Venom & Extenic

10-Oct-03New SotW, german forum

Christian Lins sent news to me, that there is an other forum for the Irrlicht engine, in German language. It can be found here. I added a link to it from the link page.
Taking a look at the eve-corp webpage, you can see, that there are already 4 new projects with the Irrlicht engine on it. I’m looking forward to see the first screenshots of these games.
Some development news: The next version of the engine will have a lot more new features than planned, because some users sent in their personal enhancements, which I will integrate into the engine. I will talk about details later, but be prepared: It will be very cool. 😉
And last: I updated the shot of the week, with an image you maybe already know.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Projects | Comments Off on New SotW, german forum

03-Oct-03Free webspace & new project

You are doing a project with the Irrlicht Engine and need some free webspace for it, including a forum and an email adress? Take a look at www.eve-corp.com. Saigumi set up this free site for Irrlicht Engine projects only. I think this is a very great service. A very big THANK YOU! goes out to Saigumi. For details take a look at the eve-corp site or into the open discussion forum.
Another interesting news: There is a new project using the Irrlicht Engine. It is a game AID for the role playing game ‘Shadowrun’, created by WhytWulf. Seems that he has used Ogre before and now switched to Irrlicht.
I added links to saigumis eve-corp and the shadowrunonline.sf site on the link page and updated the author page.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Projects | Comments Off on Free webspace & new project

30-Sep-03Terrain renderer preview

I played around with terrain rendering last week, and because the results look really nice, I will definitely include a terrain renderer in the next release. Take a look at the new screenshots, they show the alpha version of the renderer, drawing some ultra realistic looking terrain.
And as you can see, we’ve got a new shot of the week: Cleves sent in this picture showing a scene from a game he is working on. The game has not a name yet, but he says he will think about it soon. 🙂

By CuteAlien | Posted in News | Comments Off on Terrain renderer preview

25-Sep-03New project using Irrlicht

Hunter Poitevint announced that he and his team are developing a 3D action game with the Irrlicht Engine, called ‘Supa-G’. They’ve set up a webpage for it at www.supa-g.com, I already added this to the link section.
Just a few words on the current development status: I implemented now the new texture loading code and everything seems to work perfectly. From the next release on, the engine will no more be limited to 16 bit textures. I added two new screenshots which show 32 bit textures in action to the screenshot gallery. But I don’t know yet when this release will be out, I’ve got to fix some bugs, and add some additional features.
I updated the development page with the new status and added a new question to the FAQ.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Projects | Comments Off on New project using Irrlicht

23-Sep-03More examples

Saigumi, Jrnovoa, Joi, and Gorgon Zola now posted 5 example applications using the Irrlicht Engine with source code included into the offtopic forum. Gorgon Zola for example posted a very impressive quad tree terrain scene node, with LOD rendering. I made screenshots of 4 examples, you can take a look at them on the left or in the screenshot area.
I also added one of the shots representatively of the others as shot of the week

By CuteAlien | Posted in News | Comments Off on More examples

19-Sep-03API doc uploaded

The API documentation for 0.4.1 is uploaded now.
I also updated the development page and changed some colors of the website.
If you take a look into the forum, you’ll see that I’ve splitted the help forum into a beginner and an advanced developers category. Hope the forum is a little bit clearer now.
There are some new interesting threads in the offtopic forum, started by saigumi and jrnovoa, who posted some demos they made with the Irrlicht Engine, source code included. Maybe some other users want to post their demos (with source) too, to let other people be able to learn from it?

By CuteAlien | Posted in News | Comments Off on API doc uploaded

18-Sep-03Irrlicht Engine 0.4.1 released!

I released version 0.4.1 today. It comes as non-sdk-release, which means that there are no examples, media, tools and tutorials in it. And there are no very big changes, just some little new features and lot of bug fixes. Here is a short overview:

  • New GUI elements: Message Boxes, Multiline Text and modal dialog windows.
  • Faster input processing.
  • Non default MD2 animations are now supported.
  • Automatic event processing for cameras.
  • Keymapping for FPS camera.
  • Compressed TGA loading.
  • Version checking.
  • Converting 3D coordinates into 2D and the other way round.
  • Quadratic gravity acceleration with the CollisionResponseAnimator, fixing the wall climb bug.
  • Lots, lots of bugs fixed.

For detailed descriptions, take a look at changes.txt. You can find a link to the release in the download section. I also updated the author page with a new credit, and added a new screenshot showing new gui elements in action.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Releases | Comments Off on Irrlicht Engine 0.4.1 released!

14-Sep-03New SotW and 0.4.1 development

I am currently working on a new release (0.4.1), already implemented are: Faster input event processing, compressed TGA loading (thanks to Jon Pry), collision helper methods, more GUI elements, version checking, refactored event receiver system, bug fixes and a lot more. I think 0.4.1 will be out next week, so stay tuned.
And as you can see, I uploaded a new shot of the week showing a scene from the techdemo 0.4.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News | Comments Off on New SotW and 0.4.1 development

08-Sep-03Terrain renderer

Knightoflight wrote a terrain renderer for the irrlicht engine and is asking for help to extend it. You can contact him using the forum. Download the renderer from the download section.
I uploaded a screenshot of the renderer and added two new questions/answers to the FAQ.
And last, there seem to be some problems with the CodeWarrior tutorial: Some applications seem to crash. If you find a solution for this problem, would be nice to post it into the forum. Thanks!

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Projects | Comments Off on Terrain renderer