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.

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

06-Sep-03Irrlicht and Codewarrior

There is a new tutorial written by André Simon, which describes how to create applications using the Irrlicht Engine with Metrowerks CodeWarrior. Thus, now 5 IDEs are supported: The last 3 versions of Microsoft Visual Studio, Bloodshed DevC++ and Metrowerks Codewarrior.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News | Comments Off on Irrlicht and Codewarrior

04-Sep-03Irrlicht Engine 0.4 released!

A new version of the engine has been released. Download it from the download page. There are more new features and changes in the 0.4 version of the engine than in any other release before. The highlights are:

  • Collision Detection and Response. Add gravity, sliding and stair climbing to your application only by switching it on with 2 lines of code.
  • Particle System for snow, fire, smoke, explosions.
  • Scene node for creating realistic water surfaces.
  • Fast and precise picking.
  • Stencil shadows using the ZFAIL method.
  • New materials like transparent reflection or 2 layer solid material.
  • Simplified ISceneNode interface.
  • Better MD2 animation playback interface.
  • Better debugging features like text output and automatic boundingbox drawing.
  • Video mode list.
  • Interface for fading in and/or out the whole screen or parts of it.
  • Better linux port: Lots of bugs have been fixed.
  • Mesh manipulator.
  • 2 brand new tutorials.
  • New interactive techdemo.
  • Lots of bug fixes, for example the blackscreen bug should be history.

For a detailed description of all changes take a look at the changes.txt file. I uploaded some new screenshots of the new version into the screenshot area, the two new tutorials into the tutorial section and the development status on the development page. In addition, there is a new shot of the week, showing a terrain renderer created by knighttoflight.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Releases | Comments Off on Irrlicht Engine 0.4 released!

27-Aug-03New SotW & sourceforge issues

Again I uploaded a new shot of the week. It has nothing to do with the current development, it simply looks cool. It is not possible to make a shot of the now implemented collision detection and response, and as long as nobody sends me screenshots of his project with the engine, I’ll have to upload my own shots. 🙂 The forum seems to work well, and the sourceforge server problems also other sourceforge sites are encountering are getting better. I added a link to saigumi.net on the link page.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News | Comments Off on New SotW & sourceforge issues

22-Aug-03New forum

Because of a user request, I set up a new forum. I chose a phpBB2 Forum with a Irrlicht-style adapted VB2 skin, hope you like it. This new forum will replace the sourceforge forum, so it would be really nice if you could go there, check it out, and post some messages into it. Also, it does not look nice as empty as it is, so post as much as you can. 🙂

By CuteAlien | Posted in News | Comments Off on New forum

20-Aug-03Better picking and collision detection

As you can see in the screenshot on the left, picking now works really good. Picking is already 100% implemented and I am currently working on collision detection and response. I hope it will be possible to go through a 3d map like in first person shooters in the next release. I updated the development page for you to be able to watch the progress of version 0.4.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News | Comments Off on Better picking and collision detection

15-Aug-03New shot of the week

I uploaded a new shot of the week, again showing the particle system. Yesterday, I played around with stencil shadows and added the option to choose between ZFail and ZPass method, to be able to move the camera into shadow volumes without errors. This will be included in the next release of the engine.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News | Comments Off on New shot of the week

12-Aug-03New Project using the Irrlicht Engine

A new game called ‘The ReShock Project‘ using the Irrlicht Engine is being created by Christian Lins. It is a Fan-Fiction game to System Shock 2. Find more information on the games website, which now is linked from our link page.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News, Projects | Comments Off on New Project using the Irrlicht Engine

11-Aug-03New tutorial

Andy Spurgeon wrote a new tutorial on how to set up Dev C++ for developing applications with the Irrlicht Engine with it. Thanx! You can find the new tutorial in the tutorial section.
In addition I updated the screenshot section and the link page.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News | Comments Off on New tutorial

08-Aug-03Particle System

The last days I added an easy to use but very extensible particle system scene node to the engine for creating explosions, smoke, snow, fire and so on. It looks really nice (take a look at the new screenshots) and is surprisingly fast. It will be included in the next release of the engine.

By CuteAlien | Posted in News | Comments Off on Particle System