Hello, Im french, and my english is a bit bad.
I want to start the developpement of a 3d game and I learnt C++. I watched Unity developpement video which looks very easy and fast, I could learn C# if it worth. And renders are just beautiful.
So, i have one question. Do have I to learn C# or try Irrlicht or Ogre ?
Thanks for your reply
Irrlicht and Ogre 3D do have .NET (C#) bindings but I don't know how good they are.
http://irrlichtdotnet.codeplex.com/
http://www.ogre3d.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=Ogredotnet
http://www.ogre3d.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=MOGRE
I have a little bit of an aversion to .NET bindings like these (since they always seem to lag behind the main project), so if you are interested in using .NET rather than C++, then I suggest using Unity.
Irrlicht when used with C++ is pretty easy to use. Ogre 3D is a little more complex but arguably more flexible than Unity and Irrlicht.
http://irrlichtdotnet.codeplex.com/
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I have a little bit of an aversion to .NET bindings like these (since they always seem to lag behind the main project), so if you are interested in using .NET rather than C++, then I suggest using Unity.
Well this one hasn't disappeared yet, but they stopped working on it:)
But since the threadstarter knows C++ already I'd suggest not using the .net bindings too..
Unity
What a great argument!
Just try them out, there are tutorials on all 3 corresponding websites and it will take only a day, after that you should be able to make a decision, it probably depends on how deep you want to get into the "graphics stuff" vs. "making a game".
Well you you should keep in mind that Irrlicht and Ogre3D are graphics engines and not gameengines. There might be sceneeditors for both of them but you can't compare them to Unity. Unity has everything you need to make a game bundled in a big package. For the other two you have to basicly create the package and all the tools you might need.
Well you you should keep in mind that Irrlicht and Ogre3D are graphics engines and not gameengines.
QFE.
Unity is a boxed game engine, complete with all the bells and whistles. By comparison, Ogre is just a rendering engine. IrrLicht doesn't really bear discussing.
Thanks for your repplies. I will watch some tutorials for each one.
With irrlicht do I have to install a new 3d scene editor and add other librairies ?
Irrlicht has quite a few editors for it however the "official" one is IrrEdit (http://www.ambiera.com/irredit).
I am quite a fan of Irrlicht because it provides a good amount of functionality to get you started with 3D and C++ and once you "grow" past the convenience functionality, you can easily replace it. It is also very portable to different operating systems.
Personally I would call it a games engine because all of its default functionality (i.e addCameraSceneNodeFPS, collision, BSP support, etc..) really is geared towards game development unlike Ogre 3D which doesn't really provide much out of the box.
My issues with it.
1) The CollisionResponseAnimator in theory provides everything you need but is buggy and frame rate specifc. A massive missed opportunity so you will have to write your own (can be tricky if you are starting out).
2) It enforces it's own memory system (assuming because it was pre TR1, shared_ptr etc...?). It would be much nicer to leave the memory management to the native C++ system (RAII).
Thanks for your repplies. I will watch some tutorials for each one.
With irrlicht do I have to install a new 3d scene editor and add other librairies ?
Well as i said before Irrlicht and Ogre are just rendering engines. They render stuff. They also have some scene management for rendering scenenodes. These scenenodes are just models, particles or other graphical entities. They are not the same as in Unity. The scene editors for both as far as i know are only able to place those objects in 3d space and not script them. If you are looking for a game engine and all tools needed you should go with Unity. If you are just looking for a rendering engine and you want to create your leveleditor, physics, audio and network systems yourself go with Irrlicht or Ogre.
Another thing about Irrlicht. It is quite easy to use and really easy to extend but this comes at the cost that it has not many advanced features build in. For example it has very limited prebuild shaders and only supports shadow volumes for shadows out of the box.
You could take a look at https://code.google.com/p/urho3d/'>Urho3D
. It's C++ based, with the option of scripting in either AngelScript or Lua if desired. It's turning into more and more of a game engine, rather than just a rendering engine. It has physics, rendering, audio, UI, navigation mesh pathfinding, networking etc... and is supported on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Raspberry Pi and Linux. It is still very much under active development, but even so you should grab the latest repo from SVN, rather than the stable build, as it is far more fully-featured.
