3d Engines with VERY generous licenses?

I'm looking for 3d engines with very generous licensing terms. I need to be able to distribute it such that people can make their own mods and "games", so unless the license explicitly permits that, commercial engines will be out of the question. I don't mind paying, BTW, but most commerical engines don't permit this. ( I've checked. )

Forget GPL and LGPL too, they won't permit this.

The only one I've come up with so far which might fit the bill is Irrlicht. I don't really like the way Irrlicht works though, and it doesn't seem to allow FX Shaders at all, which is a bit of a bugger. But the license terms are very generous and GMan's excellent wrapper makes it usable.

Any other thoughts of 3d Engines with such fabulously generous licenses?

What about ColdSteel? Does that load FX Shaders ( I know it's Irrlicht, but it's modified, no? ) And what about the license? Generous enough for what I want?

Jolt3D just slipped through my mind, it may not meet your needs, but bind some script engine should make it very usable though, and distribute it is pretty easy.
http://jolt-3d.sourceforge.net/

I'm just exploring Irrlicht, and I'm learning it, it's still useful if you want to make 3D games....

ogre is going to have a non LGPL option soon, but maybe not soon enough for you. Will allow you to develop for consoles too.

http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=18753&highlight=licence+license

I dislike irlicht, it supports some lousy 3d media formats that make it far from practical to use, and more restrictive than Blitz3D for the most part.

Cipherengine

lowcost and great license.

Does Cipher work with non-Microsoft C compilers? It says on their website "should work with other C compilers" but I'd like to know for certain.

EDIT: On closer inspection, it hasn't been updated for a long, long time and it's art pipeline looks to be restrictive, so perhaps it's not ideal after all.

hey Gabe... any news on the tv3d public beta release yet... it's really taking them a while...

--Mike

I don't know, Mike. It's not really an issue for me, I was only waiting for them to release the GCC build. I'd assume it'll probably be the next beta or possibly the one after that. Some time during the summer, but that's just a complete guess, judging only from how complete and stable the thing appears to be.

Heh, 2 years and running!

Yes, ColdSteel supports FX shaders. The license may allow your users to create and distribute mods, as long as they do not redistribute the engine itself (they would have to purchase a ColdSteel license for that). This means, imaginae that you write a game in ColdSteel that support modding through .pak files. Your users would be able to create and redistribute new .pak files, but only you, as a licensed user of ColdSteel, are allowed to redistribute the game with the engine itself.

So it seems it won't work for what you want.

Thanks for the clarification, Jedive. You're right, that wouldn't work for what I wanted.

http://www.radonlabs.de/

hey nice, Nebula looks cool. Was looking at that just the other day.

Nebula does indeed look cool. I've looked at it twice before and I just downloaded the SDK again. Unfortunately I always seem to get hives just looking at the docs. Maybe I'm just thick, but it always looks unbelievably overcomplicated to me. I'm also thinking it would a huge pain in the rectum to try to wrap it for BlitzMax too.

I am sorely tempted, mind you, as it's a well-established, proven engine with a number of excellent commercial games behind it, and the license might just fit the bill.

I would suggest something very interesting and yet state of the art engine with all fancy features of next gen engines...take a look at Haddd engine..and of course, its free with source code too..gorgeus..

www.haddd.com

haddd is cool..... pretty straight forward to use and a big update since I last looked at it over a year ago...

Nebula takes the cake as one of most impossible to use engines out there though, from what i hear . i never tried it out myself.

Well Gabriel,

My second favorite 3d engine is Torque from GarageGames.com. There are two versions, the TGE and the TSE which supporst shaders. They both let a licensed user mod the engine, but I'm unsure whether you can re-distribute the engine or not.

HADDD looks good... question though...

1- can i use something other than 3DSMAx for my models?

2- the tutorials and references... mi espanol es muy deficient...


Nebula2... it's great, without a doubt... but as Gabriel said, it is very intimidating ( i know, i'm such a girlie man in my old age) from what i've read (tuts) and tried so far...

--Mike

The tutorials for Haddd are in english aswell. For the most part Haddd is clearly documented in spanish AND english. The only downer is that much of the forum is in spanish...

far as I know HADDD is supported only with 3DSMAX exporter what is more than enough for every single part od scene you dealing with, but for most indie developers its a little bit expensive..for tutorials and references, I think there is everything on eglish too(everything I have is downloaded on english)...unfortunately, HADDD will not be in development by same crew while one of the HADDD team members decide to continue...how it will look, we will see..by now its damn powerful and full of hi end fancy features, plus full source code of engine and exporter...I just say GREAT..I try it and i really love it..cool stuff..

oh and yes Red, for you if you try to use it, i will convert every single mesh you create and export from withing 3DSMAX for you...and for you free of course... :)

:) big thx NA... i'lve downloaded it, just haven't done much except a cursory glance...

will look in depth at it today...

question... 3DSMax format is what .3DS, .ASE, or something else...

also, if i'm not using 3DSMAX, will i loose out on some of the features in MAX?

--Mike

HADDD consider that you everything build within 3DSMAX environment...but since I purchase Polytrans for Max plug in, i can import almost every mesh file format I know in MAX without problems, so be free and use whatever you like..if you wanna know what can be imported trough Polytrans in order to suite your file format well, go to www.OKINO.com and see what i can import in max for you :)

i just had :) a closer look into HADDD... it's really sort of not complete just yet...

missing a few key things that are needed in a game engine... also, some of the tools and tuts are still being done...

but it sure does look great... i gotta find a way to get a few thou to license 3DSMAX :)

--Mike

http://koti.mbnet.fi/arex/db/index.html