Top 3D Engines

What are the top 3D engines that indie devs can get?

..you asking about indie teams or 'lone warrior' ??

Here's a really useful engine database (with ratings):

http://www.devmaster.net/engines/

It has everything from the most ameture engines to the top AAA engines like CryEngine and Unreal 3.

devmaster.net is where I found out about Blitz3d. Although I didn't purchase right away, in the end I made the right decision =D

Ogre3d is my favourite, it's constantly being updated with the latest features has flexible licencing to meet your needs so you can use it for free or purchase a commercial licence that will let you port to consoles etc, And now has support for staticly linking.

It also has exceptional artist tools for developers that can afford to use 3ds max in their art pipeline.

It's currently being used a lot in commercial games, 4 last year, and several to be released this year.

www.devmaster.net/engines/

Blitz3D isn't even in there!

yes, Blitz is there..just click on to BASIC in programing languages selection

http://www.devmaster.net/engines/list.php?fid=6&sid=6

Blitz 3D. Try it with Wings 3D(free!) and UU3D(very reasonable).

here's a cool looking adventure game based off of Hans Christian anderson made with ogre that is going to be released in the next couple of weeks.







high res vid http://www.hca.eu/images/trailer/HCA_trailer_640x480.mov

Low res vid
http://www.hca.eu/images/trailer/HCA_trailer320x240.mov

Were currently developing something for Bmax to play with ogre3d, its also compatible with Maxgui and lets you mix max gui with skinnable CEGUI gadgets.

To play with ogre quickly now in C#, Neoaxis looks fantastic and is a proper engine the the same vein as Torque. It had a first public release in October and has had new features and updates added at an alarming rate.

Looks to be a torque beater with compiled scripts and uses any .Net language. I've been playing with it a little and it has a nice simple interactive demo and some really nice editors.

http://www.neoaxisgroup.com/history.htm

I am also using Ogre in my projects, and I am very happy with it. Very fast and powerful (and free ;) ). I can definitely understand why it's the #1 ranked free engine at devmaster.net

One of my sub-projects is a high-performance tree rendering engine which you can use to create enormous realtime forests in your game. So far Ogre has been very easy to work with.

Screenshot. Video.


P.S. Here are some of my favorite Ogre screenshots (not mine):











Yes, I would say Ogre is an AAA engine.

hey JohnJ thats really cool, The screenshot looks more like grass so seeing the video, I was really impressed when I saw that what looked like simple clumps of grass were all actualy seperate trees :)

Are you using Eihort 1.4 or the dagon version of ogre. Were actually developing a bmax Ogre solution alongside a long term commercial project and just moved over to eihort.

Are you using static geometry for your forest, our project uses a lot of lego like bricks and were really excited about hardware instancing on PS2.0 capable GPU's as well as the streaming media in ogre 1.4.

Your forest looks very impressive indeed, will you be releasing it in some form eventualy?

Yeah, my trees aren't exactly realistic (they're programmers art). Though if a forest gets dense enough, it will end up looking like a carpet of green no matter what you do :)


It should work on both Dagon and Eihort; I'm using Eihort currently. There were a few porting issues, all which were easily resolved.


Yes, it supports static geometry, entities, and impostors. The screenshots/videos are using static geometry near the camera, and impostors in the distance.

It also has some dynamic capabilities, allowing certain pages to be reloaded in real-time.

However, since it's designed mainly for trees, grass, etc., the impostor system may not work perfectly for a lego-block style game (though I guess it can't hurt to try). Of course, all stages of rendering are optional (you can set up LODs any way you like).


It's already a free download under CVS, ZIP, and RAR forms :) You can find it under the "[solved] Expansive, dense forests" thread in the "Using Ogre in Practice" forum. It's released under the zlib license, which basically means you're free to use and modify it however you like.

Here's a link to the thread also: http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=24918&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=175

And to save you from sorting through an 8-page thread for download links, here they are:
ZIP Download
RAR Download

I'm currently working on infinite tree area support (you could have playing areas with trillions of square miles this way). It already pages the geometry to save memory, but I'm still improving it :)

Nice screenshots. I wasn't terribly impressed with Ogre last time I tried it - but that was about 2 years ago.

How simple is it to get up and running, say if I wanted to use it with C# / Vis Studio 2005?

> How simple is it to get up and running, say if I wanted to use it with C# / Vis Studio 2005?

I have not waded into this yet, but take a look here.

http://www.ogre3d.org/wiki/index.php/OgreDotNet

Hey, thanks John J, we may have a use for something like this soon.

As for using ogre with C#/visual studio. I'm not really a programmer. I'm more of the Artist and producer in the team. But I have been having fun with one of the community user created engines "NeoAxis" which is looking to be a very good and promising .NET engine thats coming along at an alarming rate. http://www.neoaxisgroup.com/

Neoaxis looks like it will walk all over Torque and grind it in the dust when its finished.

If you want straight programming without an engine framework theres OgredotNet or Mogre (Managed Ogre).

Mogre seems to be the one that people like the best

http://www.ogre3d.org/wiki/index.php/MOGRE

http://www.ogre3d.org/wiki/index.php/OgreDotNet

Were actually developing a Bmax wrapper that lets you mix bmax and maxGUI with the latest Ogre 1.4. It's pretty cool since ogre runs in a Bmax window so you can still use MaxGUI and mix it with Ogres native CEGUI 1.5
skinned gui support.

Looks like neoaxis will cost a lot when its done to license their form of it.

He hasn't stated his licencing yet, from what I understand. His plans are to have a tiered system a bit like Garage Games with their engines.

Torque can cost anything from $150 indie PC to $50,000 for a full blows xbox 360 commercial licence.

Neoaxis is planned to have Xbox360 support, the most expensive licence is supposed to be $10,000 but he hasn't decided yet, and he mentioned $100 for non commercial.

Just noticed there's a wiki for neoaxis at:

http://www.neoaxisgroup.com/wiki/Main_Page

Hey...there word on the street that a 3DRAD is back and that a new version is out and about...

@Evak, my jaw actually dropped on viewing your HCA trailer. The sound track is also particular impressive, sounds like you've subcontracted a full orchestra. I'll be putting HCA on my shopping list. Do you know if you'll be providing configurably controls to the extent that you can use a 'analogue' PS2 style usb controller ? (I've a 5 and a 7 year old...)

@John J, very impressive looking screenshots. I tried to comment on one of your screenshots that 'stands out', however they're all a treat on the eyeball in their own right.

Strong arguments for Ogre and Neoaxis then.... I am a relative 'noob' to Blitz3D.

Blitzplotter: If I'm not mistaken, Evak was just showing HCA as a demonstration of what Ogre can do; I don't think he's actually working on the product (please correct me if I'm wrong though).


Yeah, there are so many outstanding screenshots in Ogre's showcase it's amazing. This is probably because many commercial game development studios are moving over to Ogre now.

hehe, yeah. The HCA adventure game isn't mine. I just posted the video and screens as a particularly nice examples of nice ogre rendering.

Ogre seems to be pretty popular for adventure games, both the Ankh games are made with it. Quite charming and remind me of old lucas arts games.

Gamebryo?

If you can afford all these, then be my guest. Also that neoaxis engine ran like crap when all commercial games run smooth as silk. Its a timing issue, very jerky.

I realy dont know why i should use TV3D and pay for it (didnt test 6.5).
TV3D 6.2 has some strange bugs. Like they have implemented features and not finished them, which is quiet a bad thing for a Version which should be considered finished (couldnt trust them, no buy).

OgreDotNet seems quiet dead, so i tried MOGRE+MSVC# Express.
Mogre is up to >Dagon. Newton and Sound lib seem ready to use for .Net languages (havent tested it yet).
Eihort will come soon.
Didnt like Ogre/C++, way too time consuming.
Using MSVC# and this cool Form editor now makes it way more comfortable.

For a small project it feels a little bloated. Things doesnt start up as fast and smooth as BMax+MiniB3D.
But maybe thats the price for the power you get.
I feel more secure with Ogre and its large userbase, it will outrun most low budget engines in the future (if it hasnt already). Maybe Vista and DX10 will mix the cards again...no clue.
If i get it to run with Tao Framework for input, i will stay with it.

For low system specs use BMax and maybe MiniB3D. Well, like a Wonderbra needs two parts, BMax needs an official med to high system specs 3D engine. Otherwise its plain boring for the target group BMax should have been created.
Ogres API is a pain compared to Irrlicht or DBPro (where the pain lays within the language), but its worth the time. You will save the time later, where others dabbling around and wait for "coming soon" features which are standard since 1999.

Hey John J, thanks from me too! That'll sure be handy to look at!

Why should it be considered finished? They're working on 6.3.

Ogre actually loads small projects almost instantly (in fact, it loads faster than any other engine I've seen). For example, my tree system demo (shown in the video above) in around .2 - .4 seconds. I'd say that's fast enough for me :)

Unfortunately, the Ogre demos are set up to load every single sample mesh and texture no matter what demo you run. This has the result of Ogre seeming slow, because naturally you assume it just loads what you see on the screen. I think they should fix this, since you're not the first one to be misled by this.

The only thing bloated about Ogre IMO is maybe it's DLLs, which are around 10 MB in total (all those features have got to go somewhere ;) ), though they compress easily down to around 2-3 MB in a zip file.


Ogre actually runs quite well on low spec PCs, just as long as you don't try to use shaders, etc. Although I understand Ogre was designed to exactly follow OpenGL/DirectX standards, which means some non ATI/nVidia cards won't work perfectly. So you are right from a compatibility point of view.


I know it's just my opinion, but I think Ogre's API is every bit as easy than something like Blitz3D, if by easy you mean productive. You may have to type two lines to create a 3D object, where in something like Blitz3D it takes only one, but Ogre gives you 2x the power also. And unless your game is extremely simple, you're really going to be happy you have that amount of power (otherwise, you'll find yourself making workarounds, wasting >3x the time it would normally take you)

When I made the transition from DBPro to Blitz3D, I noticed I had to code a lot more to get the same thing done, but I also noticed that I had a lot more control (texture layers, for example). Ogre3D is similar, in that I have more control at the expense of a little more typing. In the end though, I find my games being completed much faster.

@Gabriel
True, finished is wrong then.
Thought they stopped working on that and started a next gen. Engine which they call 6.5.
Anyway, 6.2 full setup is there for quiet a long time to download. As there was no version change for such a long time, i assumed features in that version are ready and bullet proof.
Keeping wise FlameDuck's advice in mind to only buy for what is already there, it makes me think that TV3D is nice if you like to sit and wait (just my oppinion), IF you count on TV's feature list.
That doesnt mean its a useless engine, too many poeple tell the opposite and it seems damn fast...

@John
True skills dont need any efforts..or how it goes?;)
Currently i suck with Ogre, its a big pain to get the infos together. Tutorials here, API docs and Wiki there...

Still think that a "simple" riddle game would be much faster written in BMax+Engine like MiniB3D.
You need input and sound too and having that maintained by BRL is a great thing.

Definitely - Ogre starts to benefit when you get into more advanced 3D effects. Using Ogre for a simple puzzle game would be like using a baseball bat to swat a fly.


You're right again, Ogre does have somewhat scattered documentation. The best source for me is the included API documentation and the examples.

Many of the Ogre tutorials actually confused me more rather than less, and I can imagine how it might be the same for others. With the new "Pro Ogre 3D Programming" book, it's getting better, but I think Ogre still needs some better beginners tutorials.

in the latest version of ogre they ditched quite a few dependencies, and if you want a bare bones ogre you can simply drop a bunch of DLL's and plugins.

In our engine you could just drop CEGUI and use Maxgui id you were making an app. You don't have to use both F3F9 and GL. If you want to drop one, you can, just remove the dll.

If you only want fixed function pipeline materials that run on older systems you can drop the shaders. Use whichever physics lib you like, or drop those too.

You can get a pretty small footprint if you want. And even with materials that don't use shaders ogre has about 10,000% more flexibility than B3D. Useful if yout targeting older systems and don't want bells and whistles.

so for the basics, you only really need

Ogremain.dll 3.8mb (1.44mb zip)

RenderSystem_GL.dll 524k (193k zip)

or

RenderSystem_Direct3D9.dll 348k(118k zip)