Best 3d engine for BMAX?

So far there are some issue with almost all the 3d engines. I've spent some time to test a lot (and I've registered a bunch!), here is my opinion about the possible choice for BMAX as of today.

6/10 : TV3d : http://www.truvision3d.com : the beta is hard to use because of the lack of information (need to browse the forums). The video are great, but the examples are ridiculous. The water is very very far from AAA games released 2 years ago (Farcry?) Also it is not stable, the terrain need to be re-written to be more shader friendly. Also it is more adapted to VB6, or .NET, most of the samples are written in these languages. AS of today, you cant release anything made with the BETA, and there is no final release date...Maybe in 6 months?

7/10 : Torque : http://www.garagegames.com : the shader version is going close to the final but there is still no shadows (stencil). Also Torque is made to run with the Torque script that is not fast. So if you want to do something a little bit more complicated you need to change the basic source code that is +500 000 line of code. Programming Torque is a little bit like modding HL2, but the HL2 engine is much better and free. The new terrain with Torque is mindblowing, well I can't say more because of the BETA status, but wow!

7/10 : 3Impact : http://www.3impact.com : it is easy to use, and well supported by Bmax. but there is no terrain (well octree, or adaptative terrain for doing huge spaces), no water and you can't create your own shaders!!! Frustrating...

9/10 : Irrlicht : http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net : nice engine, maybe the best when the new wrapper version (1.1) will be upgraded. This engine seems to be the most complete so far, it supports a lot of formats, has a great terrain engine, supports all shaders, use global shadows ...

5/10 : Renderware : http://www.renderware.com : a little bit old, the tools are awful and is more designed to be used from C++ (the v 6)...

6/10 : Orgre : http://www.ogre3d.org : too complicated so it is almost impossible to maintain a wrapper. Use too much callbacks, made to be used from C++, with inheritance and classes.

4/10 : Crystal Space : http://www.crystalspace3d.org : this engine was very promising 2 years ago, since 2004 nothing interesting has happened to this engine, due to its complexity : you need 165 DLL in order to run it!!! Who want to make a wrapper for that engine?

6/10 / : C4 Engine : http://www.terathon.com/c4engine/ : this engine seems very interesting, but the license is 100 USD and you can't be signed with an editor. weird license BTW. There is a nice editor with scripting, and support for all shaders, good shadows, sound, network. Ony one small DLL seems to be the core of the engine, no one did a wrapper on it? Btw in the forums, people seems to complain about the lack of features, no LOD, no huge terrain, well it seems to be in alpha stage rather than in release as they pretend to be.

6/10 : Appocalyx : http://apocalyx.sourceforge.net/ : I've always liked this engine, because of its specific features. Flags, clothes simulation, but it can do terrain, water, and a lot of things. Now it is free and with its source code. But hard to do a wrapper on it because it uses the lua script engine.

6/10 : Nebula 2 : http://www.nebuladevice.org/ : promising in 2004, dead since 2005, scriptable through Tcl/Tk, Python and Lua, but not thru BMAX... in my opinion depends too much on GPL and external dependancies, too complicated to make a simple wrapper on it.

If you have experienced some engine (the reality engine?) please tell us if you think it is suitable for BMAX?

OGRE

Ogre works really well with SOW in blitzmax, has the most complete fixed function pipeline materials system I have seen anywhere, so its great for older cards. It also has good shader support but you do need to know how to program in order to use them.

SOW is a great wrapper that appart from a few niggles, if fixed it will be very like Blitz3D. Out of the Box with C++ and .Net languages ogre has a b3d like high level abstraction layer and entity system. It's a bit more complex, but feels kind of familiar in many ways.

Ogre has an extensive range of addons avaliable for it, including 5 physics API's, a couple for input, 3 networking libs, CEGUI is built in and offers a very nice efficient skinned cross platform GUI, but there is also support for WXwidgets. Opcode collision library, and various tools are avaliable. Paging landscape terrain system. a new game framework and editor, particle system editor etc.

It has the best 3dsmax art pipeline avaliable for it now that its past the early beta stage. Also support for most high end apps, Blender and Ultimate unwrap.

It's fast, and has impressive fast shadow support, 60,000 tri level with no optimization and everything casting stencil shadows ran at 25 - 30fps on my Geforce 3

I'd give ogre 7.9/10 overall, 8/10 for art pipeline if you have one of the better supported apps and basic scripting knowledge. 9.5/10 if yo use 3dsmax and ofusion.

Irrlicht

Seems ok as an engine but being primarily a 3D artist I found it very cumbersome. It has no real art pipeline requiring you to juggle various formats for different needs and none of them are suitable for modern realtime 3D. B3D support that was recently added was nice, but too little too late. B3D itself is pretty outdated where materials are concerned, but is otherwise still one of my favourite formats. Especialy when compared to the alternatives, .3ds and OBJ and my3d

I think the lack of art pipeline tools let irrlicht down a lot, without vast improvements in this area it falls short.

7/10 overall 4/10 Art pipeline

I don't think it's usable with 3D engines/modules that are not cross platform given cross platform nature of BlitzMax :)

You have me a bit confused, I have to say.

You say TV3D ( which does water like this :



) is far, far from Far Cry water ( and judging by screenshots like that, only if you mean far, far better )

but then you say Apocalyx ( which does water like this :



} is worth an equal grade.

And that's not even allowing for the fact that you probably haven't seen some of the newer ( freely available ) water shaders which give TV3D better water than that screenshot above.

So yeah, I'm a little bit confused at how you're rating these things. It's also entirely untrue to say that all the samples are written in other languages. Kenshin has put a LOT of work into getting a whole series of samples converted to BlitzMax and he's already finished fourteen of them.

Furthermore, the BlitzMax wrapper emulates almost exactly the syntax of these other languages, so any code you find in C#, VB, C++ or Delphi can easily be converted to BlitzMax.

Torque,

I always wanted to like it but just can't there are far to many cons. It's great that they are the first to jump on an opportunity and open doors for indies. But their tech is always dragging behind the more modern competition.

Their art pipeline tools are pretty poor, and they rely heavily on outdated BSP technology which is great for underlying structure in an engine, but not really for visuals.

They don't address really basic graphical features and art pipeline tools. only 1 UV for DTS even in the shader engine. No fixed function materials worth a damn in either engine in either TGE/TSE

Rumours of dropped support for linuz and soon the Mac in favour of windows and 360 is cause for concern. Not cross platform for TSE anytime soon except for 360.

No entity system, and a awkward scripting language. the tools for converting maps to torque ones is always buggy. Funnily enough the one map editor that got the most acurate results was WED for 3DGS. Last time I used torques Map2Dif there was rounding off of floats, so some things wouldn't line up properly or become non convex when exported from quark, hammer, or Radiant.

terrible art pipeline, with Max plugins having barely changed in over 5 years. Things have moved on and for the most part left torque behind. Allthough having said that, finished games are being released which puts it up to the top of the list for actualy shipping games. And its the only quick path to 360 at the moment.

I've made quite a nuisance of myself on their forums, bringing up the major issues with the art side of the engine on occasion. The response is usualy, you can do anything with torque, you have the source go fix it yourself.. OK!

For support you mostly have the community and the resources they create, many of which are out of date and simply don't work without a lot of prior knowledge and recoding. There are few high level functions avaliable even in script something like rotations is a real pain, often requiring you to understand a lot of tricky math to do even simple things that you take for granted with something like blitz3D.

I rate Torque 6/10 overall, and 4/10 for art pipeline.

It is a little bit out of topic, but I've tested the TV3d engine and downloaded the water samples too.

However doing a game is not only a matter of water.
1- the TV3D license forbid any picture or info about the upcoming SDK 6.5 (btw so you should remove the picture :)
2- the TV3D license forbid any use (release) of any tool until the beta is finished. This beta runs for 2 years now and there is no release date, who can rely on a wrapper of a beta version that you can't use at all if you follow the license?
3- ok TV3D does good water, but Apocalyx now support shaders (so doing the same water should not be a problem) has a freeware license, the source code of everything, and does fantastic clothes simulation. Ah and it is free.

If you see everything globaly, that's why I give them the same note.

About your Wrapper, you sell about 40 EUR a wrapper for an engine that is still in beta. Logically, your wrapper should be in beta too and be released when the TV3D is released, I'm not sure if you are authorized by the authors of TV3D to sell a tool that works specifically on an unfinished and confidential 3D engine.

Btw the best water is here : http://gameprog.it/hosted/typhoon/

Evak, the review of Torque is based on the Shader version (still in beta). I agree with the graphic pipeline.

No they don't. Sorry, but that's just flat wrong.


Well if they ask me to, I surely will, but since it's in their public gallery, I don't think that's very likely to happen.


Actually that's wrong too. They *ask* you not to release anything. It's not legally binding and the worst they could do would be to remove you from the beta program. They've also hinted that they might give someone permission if they had a compelling reason and asked nicely.


No I don't. I give the wrapper away for free. If anyone wants to show their appreciation, get their hands on the source code and take up my ( valuable ) time offering them support for it, then I ask that they donate $40 for my time.


Yes, the authors are not only aware of the wrapper, one of them gave me help and an advance beta of the engine in order to test and complete it.


I've seen FAR better water than that in both TV3D and Quest3D.


That's my whole point. You're not seeing things globally. You're not offering an objective assessment. 3Impact scoring higher than Renderware and TV3D is, frankly, silly, and will lead people to not pay attention to everything else you've written here, which would be a shame, as your reviews of several of the engines are very accurate and helpful.

Unobjective opinions are ten-a-penny and not even worth that, but you're close to having a set of objective comparisons here. It would be a shame if you didn't manage it, but hey, it's your thread.

This topic is about the best 3d Engine for BMAx. Not the best 3D engine.
Try to use Renderware with BMAX!
Also about the water, download the demo of typhoon and dive in the water :)
To stay in focus, if someone has an experience with other 3D engines please post, I'm interested in feedback about the reality engine for example.

I did download the Typhoon demo. For obvious reasons I can't give you a TV3D one to try, but try this Quest3D one :

http://www.quest3d.com/download/movies/Quest3D_Azure_Temple.wmv

Or if your videocard is up to it, here's an EXE of a nearly-as-impressive one from Q3D

http://www.quest3d.com/download/demo3/Quest3D_Demo_The_Coast.exe

Nikko,

Are you the same Nikko that is the project lead for Irrlicht?

Thanks

Deleted

As we're talking about "for BMax", I hope the Engine can be:

1.Usable from BMax
2.Cross Platform, and behaves the same
3.Light and Fast (the concept of Blitz..)

Gman's Irrcht is the most possible/suitable one, and really looking for the 1.1 module update.

Nope, I'm another Nikko :)

I've opened a new thread about water simulation, here : http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=62631

Gabriel : could you post your links there?

Btw the Quest3D demo is amazing!!!

I've also done some very good water with the Ogre OCEAN demo.

I haven't looked much for 3D engines yet because I still hope that blitz research will someday release a native 3D module for BlitzMax cooperating with its 2D and other language functionalities like they did with Blitz3D.

I think it will not be a module for blitzmax but rather a new program called blitMaxz3d. According to Mark logs he call the release BlitzMax3D and it sounds like the shaders and stuff will be part of the program itself.

LOL! You haven't paid much attention to some of the engines you already have, have you? The shaders and stuff are part of those too.

Nobody talk about Eliza 3D
http://www.eliza3d.com/

All depends on what you need but this one is totaly compatible and even made for BlitzMax.

hmm I hope Max3d is a module, otherwise why did I buy Blitzmax? I havent made a 2D game ever, and have never been interested in making one. I figured Max3D would be a module with a lot of new commands that were 3D oriented plus a render engine.

Still SOW makes the purchase of Blitzmax worthwhile for me.

I agree with Evak. I bought Bmax to get up to scratch with the language in preperation of the 3D module.

As it is, SOW is doing everything I need.

From Mark's worklog:

"I am pleased to announce that the Max3D -- MODULE -- has made considerable progress lately!"

I think this makes it quite clear what it will be, doesn't it?

I guess I only part-read what he said ;) but I stick to it- Bmax has no use to me in 2D. I've played around with it of course, but I got it to rewrite and continue my projects- that are 3D.

ColdSteel BitzMax module for Mac (both PowerPC and Intel) and Linux are currently under development ang going fine.They will probably be added to the next ColdSteel update.