Searching for 3d environment

nikolajbaer on 2008/03/21 16:41 of Robosub

I am really excited about building a pyweek game in 3d this time. I have been hunting around for an ideally simple 3d engine.. lightweight and simple but still with decent features. So far the ideal interface I have found is sadly not python, but actionscript, in papervision 3d. One of the big issues is having a really easy way to get blender models into my scene. It is also important to easily manipulate a mesh while it is loaded. Anybody have any recommendations? Both pyogre and panda3d seem a bit heavy weight, but I am admittedly not so well versed in either.

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Comments

TenjouUtena on 2008/03/21 17:08:

There are tons of 3D engines out there to try out. You mentioned OGRE and panda3d. http://home.gna.org/oomadness/en/soya3d/index.html - Soya 3D http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/links.html - irrlicht has a couple python bindings. And don't forget that pyOpenGL is pretty easy to use too, works rather well.

nikolajbaer on 2008/03/21 17:46:

yeah, as i noted, i have looked at ogre and panda, both seemed easy, but not super easy. I have done quite a bit with pyopengl, but I always feel like there is alot of legwork I end up redoing every time. I guess I am looking for something prepackaged, especially when it comes to dealing with models, textures and cameras.

simono on 2008/03/22 23:08:

very easy and very limited is vpython, i did a warmup last time which looked like this:

humans, warmup

no textures, no real shadows, none of this fancy stuff :) but hey, its 3d and of course lightning fast.

simono on 2008/03/22 23:10:

a really easy way to get blender models into my scene

an .obj importer for vertex-data (no textures, no animations) is easily written. take a look at .obj fileformat, its just lots of 3d point data.

nikolajbaer on 2008/03/24 16:34:

So I found the model stuff in pyglet.. hiding in contrib. Very cool, got that cranking along with ode this weekend. I think this will be a good basis for whatever I end up stapling together during the competition. I still need to tighten up my workflow, but I am very optimistic about actually building a game in 3d this time. From what I wikipedia'd, it would be neat to have some way to load collada files in to pyglet.. maybe I will think about undertaking this after the competition.

alex on 2008/03/24 21:48:

COLLADA support in pyglet would be amazing. If you've even skimmed the specification though you'll know it's going to be a huge amount of work.