Turn: Classification comparison of typical open-source 3D engines

Common 3D engines include Unreal, Quake, Lithtech, OGRE, Nebula, Irrlicht, Truevision3D...

Among them, the open-source products are free of charge: OGRE, irrlicht, fly3d, NeoEngine, revolution3d, Nebula2, and Genesis3d.

OGRE has the highest rating among free and open-source engines. One reason is that as a graphics rendering engine, it supports the most graphic features, so the rendering quality is also good; another reason is the clarity of the design model. In addition, the speed is good.

OGRE will focus on developing towards a pure, yet collaborative and scalable graphics engine, thanks to its huge community support, many things can be achieved through plug-ins with more professional engines. The physical engine uses ODE, Tokamak, and NovodeX. The network engine uses openTNL, RakNet, and eNet. The Sound Engine uses FMod and OpenAL, and the interface engine uses CEGUI.

 

 

Standard	OGRE		IrrLicht	Truevision3D
General
Type		Only rendering engine		Game engine IncludeTV3DEngine, TV3DMedia, TV3DNet ......
Ages		Written in pure C ++, totally object orientated.	Written in pure C ++, totally object orientated.	Written in C ++ and VB6 with DirectX8.1
License		LGPL	Zlib/libpng License (totally free)	· Free TV3DSDK · Registered Developer License · Group or site licenses
Develop platforms		· C ++ ·. NET	· C ++ ·. NET language binding	VB/VC ++/DELPHI/ C #/vb.net
Platforms
Windows		Support	Support	Support
Linux		Support	Support
MacOS		Support	Support
3D API
Direct3D		Support	Support	Support
OpenGL		Support	Support
Other			· The Irrlicht Engine software renderer. · The Apfelbaum Software Renderer
Architecture
Extensibility		· Extensible example framework · Flexible plugin architecture allows engine to be extended without recompilation · Use some other professional engines to achieve other features
Scripting
Materials & Textures
Materials		· Powerful material declaration language · Multiple material · Material · Multi-texture and multi-pass blending · Projective texturing · Textures can be provided and updated in real-time by plugins	· Provide common built in materials Based on fixed function pipeline or programmable pipeline · Add new materials to Irrlicht at runtime, without the need of modifying/recompiling the engine
Textures and Mapping		Automatic generation of MipMap;   The system automatically adjusts the texture size to meet hardware requirements.   Supports program-controlled texture coordinate generation and conversion.	· Bump mapping · Parallax mapping · Light maps · Sphere mapping	DOT3 Bump mapping   Multi-layer texture and hybrid mode not provided
Shaders		· Supports vertex and fragment programs, both written in assembler, and in Cg, DirectX9 HLSL, or GLSL · Support comment commonly bound constant parameters like worldview matrices, light state information, object space eye position etc	· Pixel and Vertex Shaders 1.1 to 3.0 · ARB Fragment and Vertex Programs · HLSL · GLSL	· Hardware Vertex Shaders · HLSL
Scene Management
General		· Highly customizable, flexible scene management, not tied to any single scene type. · Hierarchical scene graph; nodes allow objects to be attached to each other and follow each others movements, articulated structures etc · Scene querying	· Using a hierarchical scene graph, can mix indoor and outdoor scene seamless together · Extensible Hierarchical scene management
BSP Support		In BSP scenarios, the Sky Dome, particle effects, advanced material attributes, and even BSP space separation rules are correctly identified and automatically implemented.	· Insufficient support for BSP features	Reading BSP has a BUG.
Other
Special effects
Particle System		· Easily extensible emitters, affectors and renderers · Can be defined in text scripts for adjusting in real-time · Particle pooling	· Customizeable Particle systems for snow, smoke, fire ,...	Atmospheric effects like fog, cloud, sky (box and sphere), stars.
Light & Shadow		Currently, three types of shadows are supported: adjust texture shadows, adjust template shadows, and attach template shadows. Soft shadow is not supported. Multiple shadow rendering techniques,	· Dynamic Lights · Dynamic shadows Using the Stencel buffer	· Optimized dynamic Stencel shadows · DirectX Hardware Lighting
Other		· Support for skyboxes, skyplanes and skydomes · Billboarding for sprite graphics · Transparent objects automatically managed	· Realistic water Surfaces · Billboards · Transparent objects · Skyboxes · Fog · Texture animation	Billboard
Character Animation
		· Skeletal animation · Blending of multiple animations · Variable bone weight skinning · Hardware-accelerated skinning	· Morph target animation: · Skeletal animation	· Skeleton based, Key frame based, and morph based animations · Animations that can be enhanced by bone attaching or custom bone rotations.
Supported Formats
Textures file formats		· PNG, JPEG, TGA, BMP or DDS · 1D textures, volumetric textures, cubemaps and compressed textures (DXT/S3TC)	· PSD, JPG, PNG, TGA, BMP, PCX
Mesh file formats		Milkshape3D, 3D Studio Max, Maya, Blender and Wings3D	· 3DS, OBJ, CSM, DAE, DMF, OCT, X, MS3D, MY3D, LMTS, BSP, MD2	3DS, X, MDL, MD2, MD3
Document
		Great number of users and well known ented.	Well known ented API With lots of examples and tutorials.
Other
GUI
2D Drawing
XML		& Uuml; Support XML Converter: convert efficient runtime binary formats to/from XML for interchange or editing	& Uuml; Support Quick XML analyzer
Web Site
		Http://www.ogre3d.org.sixxs.org	Http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net.sixxs.org	Http://www.truevision3d.com.sixxs.org

 

Turn: Classification comparison of typical open-source 3D engines