Hi guys,

I have a big question that will influence my work for the next years. I have a little 3D-Engine, writte in C++ and DirectX11. Now I want to write an 3D-editor (kinda like crytek's sandbox, but obviously less advanced) and I just can't decide with GUI toolkit I should use.

These are my candidates and my thoughts about them:

WinForms: I like it. But if I use WinForms I definitely will use C# and now I have the problem how to call my native C++ Engine Code from C#. Since my editor uses almost the entire engine I had to write C++/CLI wrappers around HUGE parts of my C++ engine. Basically I end up having my engine in 2 versions (native and C++/CLI wrapper around everything). Sounds tedious and frustrating:(

WPF: Sounds really cool, but basically the same native-wrapper problem as with WinForms.

QT: From all C++ Toolkits I have seen this looks the best (in terms of window presentation and code). Though it looks like the newest version does not work with DX11?

MFC: Old, ugly, but I could use my native C++ code as it is without any wrappers and performance hits.

As you can see I am kinda lost here. I would love to use WPF or Winforms with C# for my GUI, but the managed/unmanaged boundary problems sounds huge for me. On the other side are the native C++ toolkits, but none of them seems promising to me.

So could you guys tell me your thoughts about this or maybe even share your experiences? What would you recommend me?

Thanks!

One other choice you omitted is wxwidgets, however, I (funnily enough) just started working on my wxwidgets editor again recently, and I absolutely despise it, so I just gave up with it. It's probably just because I'm so used to laying out stuff easily in winforms. So personally I've gone back to doing it in C#. In regards to the CLR wrapper, you probably won't have to wrap as much as you think. Most of the work can be done on the C++ side with the C# side giving input, which often isn't all that much. It'd be things like telling it to select an object with a ray cast (all you actually pass is the mouse coordinates) and such. It really should be quite thin. Just a thought.

Quote:It's probably just because I'm so used to laying out stuff easily in winforms

wxWidgets has addons for Codeblocks (wxSmith and wxFormBuilder )so that you can generate GUIs using WYSIWYG editors, it has the added benefit of being C++ which you want, uses native controls and does its best to conform to any specified GUI guidelines for the OS.

If you want C++ and the kitchen sink then use Qt else I recommend wxWidgets.

I tend to agree with knighty33, but I would also challenge you as to why you're writing an engine. Are you trying to make a game, trying to enter the 3rd party engine market, or is it just a hobby and you're really only interesting in tinkering and not making a game?

if it's either of the first two, I'd call you silly and tell you to use something like Unity or UDK.

If it's the third, well, I agree with knighty33, failing that, Qt.

MFC is old and a little cryptic, what with all those macros... but it is still updated by Microsoft, they recently added support for ribbon menus, for example. If you don't need complex compound controls, I would seriously consider this path.

Qt is good and complete, but it is a commercial library, and as such, the use of the free version has a few legal limitations. In addition, you have to use a pre-compiler so your code is not fully stand-alone. I doubt any of this is going to be an issue to anyone here, but this is certainly worth a mention.