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Engine Details

Panda3D

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(48 votes)

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Panda3D is a powerful rendering engine for SGI, Linux, Sun, and Windows. The core of the engine is in C++. Panda3D/DIRECT provides a Python scripting interface and utility code. Panda3D can be used with or without Python. (Paper about Panda3D: http://www.python.org/pycon/dc2004/papers/29/ )

Author

The Panda Development Group

Graphics API

OpenGL, DirectX

Operating Systems

Windows, Linux, MacOS, SunOS

Programming Language

C/C++, Python

Status

Productive/Stable

Documentation

Yes

Features

General Features

Object-Oriented Design, Other:

•	Support for ARtoolkit

Scripting

•	Python scripting interface
•	Programming on the fly using interactive scripting in the Python shell

Built-in Editors

•	Direct tools for GUI-based scene editing
•	Particle effects API and GUI-based particle panel
•	Future plans: An easy to use but powerful and generic scene/level editing tool

Physics

Basic Physics, Collision Detection, Rigid Body, Vehicle Physics:

•	Very basic physics engine that may apply forces to classes. The physics engine can handle angular or linear forces, as well as viscosity
•	There are two ways to go about collision detection: Bounding volumes & allow collisions against all geometry
•	support for ODE physics

Lighting

Per-vertex:

•	A variety of lights that work by vertex lighting

Texturing

Basic:

•	Animated textures
•	Support for video textures (AVI, MPG, MOV)

Shaders

High Level:

•	Support Cg
•	Built-in shader generator for per-pixel lighting, normal maps, tonemapping

Animation

Skeletal Animation:

•	Soft skin animation and a sophisticated actor interface for character animation

Meshes

Mesh Loading, Skinning:

•	Supports 3D Studio Max, Maya, and blender models via plug-ins.

Special Effects

Particle System, Fog:

Terrain

Rendering:

•	Generate terrain meshes from heighfields.
•	GeoMipMapping

Networking System

Client-Server:

•	a networking library and a mmo-grade patching system

Sound & Video

2D Sound, 3D Sound, Streaming Sound:

•	Sound using the FMOD library
•	Support for OpenAL

Artificial Intelligence

Finite State Machines:

•	Two different finite state machine systems: FSM & ClassicFSM

Rendering

Fixed-function, Stereo Rendering, GUI:

Features:

Ease of Use:

Stability:

Support:

Date Added

Tue, 7 Sep 2004

Last Updated

Fri, 24 Apr 2009

There are currently 48 reviews for this engine

License Name	Price	Source Code	Comments
BSD	Free	Yes

Screenshots:

Member Reviews

NOTE: The ratings and reviews below reflect the opinions of their respective authors and as such, do not reflect the opinions of DevMaster.net or its staff. The reviews are not moderated and some are completely inaccurate. Therefore, most reviews should be taken with a grain of salt. If you find any inaccurate or inappropriate reviews, let us know by stating in detail why you think the review should be removed and any links/documents that support your contention.

The engine to use if you want to use python

Posted by: albrnick at May 4, 2005

Features: The engine may be lacking some of the features of the more advanced commercial games out there, but it has done the basics, and done them well enough to allow you to get a game done.

Ease of Use: Once you understand some of the 'panda' ways of doing things, it really is quite easy to use. The tutorials/manual really help you get up on the learning curve/starting to produce right away.

Stability & Performance: It is used by Disney for ToonTown and the upcoming Pirates MMORPGS. You can't get a stronger endorsement then that. = )

Support: For a free product the support is great. They have a board where most questions are answered throughly within an hour.

I highly recommend this engine to anyone who wants to get an actual game out the door.

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Easy and Free

Posted by: FishSpeaker at Oct 3, 2005

Our company has been making downloadable 3D games with Panda3D for over a year now. The best thing about Panda3D is how quicky we can iterate on our designs. We do most of our game code in python, which lets us concentrate on building the game, not memory leaks.

The support website has excellent documentation. This includes introductory tutorials, an API reference, and active forums.

The graphic quality of Panda3D is not as good as high end commercial engines, but you can still make a good-looking game. And since it is open source, Panda3D is free.

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Nice game engine

Posted by: at May 3, 2010

Panda3D is an easy to use game engine. It's written mostly in C++ for speed with the whole API available to, and supposed to be used from, python. I've used it for hobby projects while learning to create 3D games using a game engine. Panda3D has also been used by Disney for commercial games.

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Great Engine, Very Easy to Use

Posted by: andthorwall at May 22, 2010

Python is a fantastic language, and this is a fantastic game engine to complement it. It is incredibly simple to use, and beginners with basic Python knowledge should have no trouble accomplishing a lot in very little time. Add to that the fact that it's actively maintained by Carnegie Mellon University (as opposed to a team of a dozen guys that could theoretically get a new job/get sick/die/lose interest/etc. at any moment), and is being used by Disney, so there is virtually no chance that development will stop at any time in the near future.

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Best engine I ever worked with.

Posted by: samoxa at Dec 28, 2007

All I can say is WOW.
I have never seen anything like this in an engine, the stability, the ease of use, the performance, and how rapidly you can program a game.

I am new to programming in python for other than mathematical purposes, and yet I find it easier than Java which I used almost a year on learning.

Don't let the name fool you! Install panda3d and use it for an hour to try the examples and program something yourself, I PROMISE you that you will get that time back in time of development.

Panda3d has matured lot since the first reviews, and now it has tons of amazing features to offer.

Panda is the most Completo engine I ever seen, it completely takes care of rendering so you don't have to know how or when it uses OpenGL, Directx, etc, though it gives you the flexibility to alter any aspect.

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Panda3D - Rapid development with Python

Posted by: Marc at Nov 20, 2005

Panda3D is amazing. Of all the (open-source) engines with Python bindings, it is undoubtedly the most feature-rich and most easy to use. Support and community are excellent, and even under Python it performs extremely well.

For the non-pythoners among us: It can also be used in C++ as any other library, but that is not (yet) very well documented and/or supported. Beginners are strongly advised to stick to Python, that's where Panda3D develops its full potential.

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Panda3D 1.1

Posted by: Martin1234 at Nov 20, 2005

Wow I think this is a very good game engine. There is a forum with many members that will help you any time. Many people are working on this game engine to get it better as it still is

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panda3d is cuddly but powerful

Posted by: neighborlee at Nov 22, 2005

I use panda3d for our game development because its powerful, easy to use and has great documenation, tutorials and a great community.

I Also apprecite the fact that it runs in my choice of operating system which is linux.

I also greatly admire that it will allow direct export from my preferred 3dmodeling/animation choice of blender ( http://www.blender3d.org).

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Great Powerful and CrossPlatform!

Posted by: Doug-W at Nov 24, 2005

Panda is one of the easiest to use libraries but that ease of use hides an unexpected amount of power.

It's also crossplatform being ported to Win32, Linux, SGI, with an OS/X port in progress.

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Free, Quick, and Stable... What more could you ask for?

Posted by: pandemic at Nov 28, 2005

Two industry leaders have teamed up to bring the public an easy to use, powerful free rendering engine - Disney and Carnegie Mellon University.

Panda3D's strengths lie in its rapid development cycle (due to programming in Pythin), flexibility, and reliability. The website, http://www.panda3d.org has comprehensive documentation, easy tutorials, free 3D models, and active forums where you can get most any question answered within an hour.

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Best Python engine

Posted by: mcp at Dec 3, 2005

Fully integrated Python engine, very easy to use and speed seems more than adequate.
Have seen no problems with stability although there are a lot of runtime warnings.
Documentation is adequate but it really needs a more extensive tutorial. Responses in support forums are excellent.
This is a Disney supported engine and comes closer to being of commercial quality than any free engine I have tried.

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"The Real Deal" for a COMPLETE Game Engine

Posted by: IPKnightly at Dec 13, 2005

PROS:

1 - Short learning curve.

2 - Rapid development.

3 - Complete Engine (just add logic and assets).

4 - Used (and thus tested) by many CMU students.

5 - Actually used for a MMORPG (ToonTown).

6 - No need to wonder if it can create ________ game.

7 - No silly idiosyncrasies to get in the way.

8 - Either C++ or Python or a combination of both to program in.

9 - Layers of complexity getting more complex as you go deeper but allowing more flexibility and control.

10 - Fast, Powerful, and stable (even with Python).

11 - Continually developed by a commercial company (Disney) for commercial purposes.

12 - Free to use for your own commercial purposes (except the used FMOD sound library).

13 - Uses NSIS to package up your game for distribution.

14 - Great documentation and/or help.

CONS:

1 - Uses the FMOD sound library. (However, I have found a work around and have provided an example.)

2 - No convenient executable '.exe' to distribute. And no real way to hide your "source code" when using Python.

COMMENTARY:

Having used Panda3D for a little while now, I can say this engine is what you wish every free game engine could be. Rapid development is the name of the game and that is forefront when using Panda3D for game development. With a robust feature set there isn't much that cannot be obtained. Panda3D allows you to focus on game programming, specifically your game logic, thereby getting out of the way instead of forcing you to but heads with it at every corner. When a problem arises I find that it is me that problem is with instead of the engine. Finding it surprising that this piece of middle-ware is free, I actually enjoy using Panda3D. So far I have been able to create two full fledged game examples in a matter of weeks. Being a "lone wolf" developer at this point, it is advantageous to have certain things done for you when ever possible thereby allowing me to conquer other tasks that must be done—Panda3D fits perfectly into this scheme.

Bottom Line. Panda3D is but a tool but a fantastic tool at that. If your are more interested in producing a game rather than the technology then Panda3D (in my experience) is the weapon of choice in your game development arsenal. As with any engine—just use it—and I think you'll like what you discover.

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great engine for fast prototyping

Posted by: panoramix at Dec 29, 2005

well... I've never gave a try to panda3d until a couple days ago... actually the name and the lack of feature highlights in it's webpage kept sending me away from it. However, since I installed the package and tested the 3dsmax exporter I can't keep my hands out of it. It's features are impressive, and above all, _very_ robust. For a team looking for an engine with really good 3dsmax->engine or maya->engine pipeline give panda3d a try!

the good:
+ very rapid prototyping
+ superb 3dsmax to engine pipeline (meshes, bones, morph animations)
+ feature rich, platform independent

the bad:
- all tutorials and sample code focus on using the engine from python. There's very little documentation and not even one sample program using panda3d from c++.

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Easy and Staple

Posted by: spatton at Jan 6, 2006

I've been developing in Panda3D for almost 3 years now and it's grown to a be a 3D standard for me. Whether the project I'm working on is for fun or for work, Panda continues to be easy to use and powerful enough.

Panda's close link to Python is definitely an asset. Python is very easy to learn if you don't know it and has very robust features.

Panda can be used to develop any sort of game or project. It isn't a FPS only engine or a RTS only engine, etc... it's very open and easily adaptible from the start.

And heck, since it's open source, if there is ever anything you really need it to do or do faster that it doesn't, you can add it yourself! And if you ever have a question the (very good) documentation or active community doesn't answer (unlikely), you can look in the code.

Did I mention it's free?

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Definitely a solid engine to consider

Posted by: Nameless128 at Feb 6, 2006

It's an engine that's been proven in a commercial product (Toontown Online).

Disney continue to use the engine, so you get bug fixes and feature additions that are making it into their next games.

You can write an entire game in python with it.

What more can you say. It's just about as ideal as it gets. If you need something else drastically different you're going to be writing a custom engine no matter which way you shake it.

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Hard to start...

Posted by: meng_thor at Mar 24, 2006

Panda is very hard to even start, but if you do then you'll know that programming in Panda is very simple based on their fact and the fact that I've seen the code myself and seems easy enough to programming. To me learning to program is easier from a book with lots of tutorials then online ones. I don't know why, but this open source project is very promising they answer you quickly and on time as well. To me I had a hard time even starting my code but I found an easier way which I could just drag the py file into the ppython exe and it works like a charm. so far... to be honest I'm changing my ratings better. Panda could use a book on this and that way it can be easier for some of us that way i can look at the book and my work at the same time. That way i won't have to go to the internet all the time scrounging for tutorials or waiting for help. Panda can use some more physics and collision and a freeware sound system that way we don't have to pay them much money just to sell our product unless you don't mind paying 100 bucks for an indie liscence for FMOD.

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amateur dev's engine of choice

Posted by: Wannes at Dec 29, 2006

After using 3 other engines for some months (sdl, irrlicht, OGRE) I discovered panda3D and I think I finally found the perfect engine for my project

Panda3D is very user-friendly (python, good design, and very good documentation)
I managed to make a working game with animations &movement & everything in a couple of hours (had to learn panda and python in these hours). It took me several days to accomplish this with the other engines

It maybe lacks some of the advanced features, say OGRE offers but the easy of development is just unbelievable
Also disney is using it for its new pirates MMORPG so hopefully some ncie features will be added (disney wrote the original version fo panda3D)

the use of python over c++ is also very nice because artist CAN actually edit small parts of code (scaling colors enablign and disabling things),this is extremely usefull!

when you have a small dev team panda3D is the engine of your choice!

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Only for use with Python

Posted by: MrTAToad at Jul 23, 2006

This engine is only for use with Python - there are no documents explaining how to use it with C/C++, and no discussions on the forum about it, meaning you would have to sift through the vast number of headers and try and work out what to do.

Unfortunately the headers aren't really detailed enough to help. You could look through the source too, but why spend the extra time doing that ?

It looks good, but unless your into Python, then you can forget it.

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Easy to learn, solid for production

Posted by: dmpayton at Jan 14, 2007

I'm a Comp Sci student with a massive interest in game development, and Panda3D has made life much easier for me to grasp concepts. I can program in my language of choice (Python), and the community, while small, is extremely supportive.

Definitely a solid engine worth looking at for any project.

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Panda3d... feels good on my skin.

Posted by: Crimity at Jan 21, 2007

I came across Panda3d when I was looking for something that I could easily prototype in. I had no previous experience with python or any other programming language and was able to easily do what I previously considered advanced. I'm also finding panda is great for making 3d tools.

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easy to learn hard to master

Posted by: LegionDD at Jan 22, 2007

Features:

With Panda3D you have an engine with a decent feature set.
I don't mean the "must have" features, like loading models, textures, doing translations and rotations, loading sound, etc.
I mean the details in functions like translation and rotation that can save you from writing your own vector math, or the FSM which allows easy to implement AI.

Ease of Use:

That's where Panda is really great. You'll have your first scene up and running in a few minutes.
The fact that Panda works perfectly with Python makes for quick production cycles. I can't think of a better engine/language combination to start developing your very first game. You could even start to learn Panda and Python at the same time.
And if there's something you won't find in the manual, you'll find it in the forum.

Sability & Performance:

Well, the fact that there's a commercial game (Disneys ToonTown) out there schould speak for itself.

Support:

You can't hit it any better than the Panda Community.
If you have any question that can't be answered by the community, the developers of the engine themselves will help you out.

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Great engine!

Posted by: pro-rsoft at Dec 27, 2007

Panda3D is just an amazing engine. It's cross-platform, it's not hard to program a game in a very short time, (also because it makes use of the easy Python language.)
In one word: Awesome!

IPKnightly wrote:
"2 - No convenient executable '.exe' to distribute. And no real way to hide your "source code" when using Python."
This is not true. The engine comes with utilities to easily distribute your game as an EXE which automatically generates an installation file for your game. Also can you compile your .py file into a binary file.

Pro's:
-I wont name them, because that doesnt fit in this small textbox here :) And if I only post part of them, I feel I'm not doing good to Panda3d ;)
Con's:
-None, afaik.

EDIT:
It's now almost a year later and it improved A LOT. Great community, hundreds of extra features like OpenAL, loads of more c++ documentation, you name it. The old 2005/2006 reviews which talk about missing features are old and Panda3D has improved a lot since.
Plus, theres now a website where you can host your panda projects, for free, at p3dp.com !!!
If I could add more than 5 stars, I definately would!

Oh, and did I forget to mention? GREAT crossplatform support, this engine details page don't list Mac OS X, but Panda3D definately supports Mac!

Now, the Panda3D developers are developing a system that can generate shaders for any material type or any effects you like! For example, you will be able to easily setup HDR effects, and you name it its gonna be there, without having to write any complex shaders or so.

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a good engine

Posted by: quimera at Apr 20, 2007

i test the engine for a time now.. is very easy and have a short learnig curve... the develop time is short because of python... the stability is grate and the performance to (for a binding of python in c++)...

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My favourite game (not only 3D) engine

Posted by: raytaller at Apr 21, 2007

Yes, in term of features, Panda3D is often compared to Ogre. But there's a huge difference : Panda3D is a mature, professional quality game engine.

The professional side of Panda is that it was written by game industry professionals (the Disney studios), for making a professional game (Toontown by Disney), and has as its main maintainer a professional game programmer (the C++ programmer of the game "A Tale in The Desert").

Then, you'll not only find a stable as rock game engine, but also a lot of professional tools, such as graphical real time profiler, lot of converters, a scene debugger, that allows to navigate through the scenegraph, move objects, move the camera etc.

It's sometimes said that Panda is a python engine, but it's not. It's a fast engine written in C++, with a great wrapper to Python. Then, you create all the logic of your code with this easy and object oriented language. If there's a performance issue, just implement the bottleneck in C++ with a python extension. Or maybe will you prefer to write your hole game in C++.

Python is most productive game engine I know. You'll create your first hello world scene in 2 minutes.

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Great to prototype 3d application.!!!

Posted by: broken_sword at May 18, 2007

It uses Python for quick prototyping (or to build) an interactive 3D application!

Visually? compared to Gamebryo, people might say..."panda3d is not quite there yet", but then again, Game engine doesn't make great graphics, it's the team (read: your team) that makes great graphics.

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IT FITS ME GOOD !!!

Posted by: ynjh_jo at Jun 18, 2007

... started with no 3D experience at all, here is my short history :

May 2005 :
started learning Maya : modeling, rendering, animation, physics, effects

Oct 2005 :
hungried for something more, I decided to learn 3D programming. I searched for some free 3D engine, but most of them use C/C++ interface, which I haven't mastered yet.

Dec 2005 :
tried Panda3D (v1.0.5-v1.1) and Python for the first time. Realized that Python is rich of features and much much easier than any high-level language I've ever learned, has kept me from leaving it.

During 1 year learning Panda3D (excluding 3 months I got my MoBo RMAed), I managed to do (chronological) :
1. an FPS-style architectural walkthrough, featuring :
- some different movement modes
- easy switch of different alternative of design parts, great to be used during design evolution & evaluation
- easy arrangement & auto-layout of the technical drawings, grouped based on the drawing's type, sequentially displayed over the 3d world (+ abilty to zoom on the drawing using mouse position as zoom focus)

2. some real physics interaction using ODE + easy Object Oriented scene setup

3. some Cg shaders, including the standard "raw" shadow mapping

4. automated lightmapping (layered texture) pipeline from Maya -> Panda3D

5. mix of script and visual layout tool of 2D scene, using Panda3D's native GUI

Since none of my close buddies has programming experience, I did those things all alone, only accompanied by the GREAT community.
I still can't believe I've done them all, what a wonderful year for a newB !

Missing features :
1. built-in shadow volume.
I just can't do that since I don't have any C++ experience needed to do the silhouette extrusion which can't be done in GPU :P.
2. the other features simply covered by the community :D

sry 4 my English...

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I like pandas

Posted by: darksmaster923 at Jul 25, 2007

...including the game engine

Features 5/5
Lets see, theres shaders which will make your game better
+Normal Mapping
+Glow filter
+Good Physics
+Powerful rendering
+Its a game engine
+Can read alot of file formats(.x, .bam, .egg and more but i dont remember them now)

Ease of Use 5/5
Ease of use astounds me. Not as easy to use as the point and click engines(D'oh) but much more powerful and better. It is based on pure coding, so get reality factory if you dont want that. But as pure coding its really easy thanks to python. In a day I could make a simple game where you play as a panda and eat things and customize how i like! And I'm a noob at python!

Stability 5/5
Panda hasnt crashed on me unless i did something wrong.

Performance 5/5
Panda is slow when you do something wrong and/or dont optimize it correctly

Support 5/5
Panda has extensive Documentation and a large community. Plus there a tutorials that come with it and on the internet.

Overall 10/10, 5/5, 1/1, whatever. Panda is an awesome Game engine(not just a rendering engine!)

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omg awesome engine11111111111

Posted by: rabbitmasterer at Oct 15, 2007

omg this is an awesome engine! it uses an extrememly easy to learn and use language: pyhton!!!!!11 it makes it extrememly easy to use and the engine has good performance and stabiliy. it supports shaders to make it look coolz. i luv it. i marked it down in ease of use dou cuz its not perfectly extrememyl easy

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Best game engine for me !

Posted by: eddyfosman at Dec 11, 2007

I have tried some engine like 3DGameStudio , Blender game engine , Ogre , Irrlicht , Crystal Space ... and I can say that Panda is the greatest game engine :)

- short learning curve ( yes , because of Python , API , I haven't use CXX but I think it's same :D ), I 'm translating its manual from English to Vietnamese

http://forum.gamedev.vn/index.php?showtopic=1037

- Its rendering looks nice ...

- It's game engine , it support physical walker , FSM AI state ...

- If alsmost game engine use loop while , CPU always in 99 % , Panda use its own method run() , CPU always in 30 - 50 % (in samples and Airblade , I have AMD 3500+ 2,2 ; 240 MB RAM and 16 MB graphic share onboard :) ) I hate use loop while for game loop directly :(

...

such a nice work !!!

Happy fosing !!!

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Panda3d should be one of the 1st engine considerd

Posted by: treeform at Dec 27, 2007

I would recommend using http://panda3d.org ( don't get fooled by the childish look of their site)

and really really like it :) Why would some one not want to use it?

Its a 3d engine that was made to be scripted with python 1st and lots of parts are python only. While c++ support is there to write extensions for more speed!

It has 2 games written in it Toon Town and Pirates of The Caribbean. Unfortunately it is stuck with an odd license ( http://panda3d.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2993&highlight=opensource ) while it is like BSD.

I myself ditched pyOpenGL and looked for python solutions like python-ogre (which is very buggy and does not run well on Linux and did not run for me that well on windows either).

I develop only on Linux and only if i can use python, i set the rules - its a hobby! But after using, and liking it, i would definitely want to be using it for a projects to feed myself.

My programs run without change on windows (mac os X support is there but... there is no nice package b/c of low demand) and on many different hardware.

Developing games is much easier with panda3d then pyOpenGL it takes batteries-included python mentality taken to the next level . Its a full game engine from Cg shaders to perlin noise, from reading zipped virtual directorates ( if you don't want to show your data ) to patching them, from network to sound FMOD and openAL , from openGL to DirectX7,8, or 9. It has lots and lots of stuff you would want from a 3d engine and then some! But if you are missing some thing you can always hack it together with python or c++; the engine is very modular.

Oh an here is some screens of my hobby game "Angels Fall First : The Second Antarean War" made with panda - with me being the only programmer http://affuniverse.com/2aw/2awscreens1/ (still alpha version) and i hope to finish this MMORTS some time next year ( http://aff2aw.com alpha site of the project )

Do look at it and don't be fooled by the ugly site like it did me at first! http://panda3d.org

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Panda3D nice and easy

Posted by: valefort at May 24, 2008

well documented, having disney and Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center as developer, used by disney to produce Commercial game (ToonTown and Pirates of the Caribbean Online), great community, use both python(primary) and c++.

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Great engine!

Posted by: crazyelf at Mar 12, 2008

This is a great engine. The community is extremely helpful when you are just starting out. Panda3d uses python making it an extremely powerful and flexable engine. Panda3d was used in the Disney games: ToonTown, Pirates of the Caribbean online. Both online games, with decent graphics, but this isn't the limit of the power. It may require a little python scripting but its really easy to learn. You'll be started making your own games, in a very short time.

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Ohh_mine

Posted by: parazicka at Mar 22, 2008

It is not only the graphic engine, its a full game engine, and it is opensource, panda3d + python and you can create your games quick and easy ;)

This engine has two maded MMOs by Disney=)

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exactly what I spent two weeks looking for..

Posted by: joeldg at Apr 9, 2008

I spent two weeks digging around for a 3d engine to fit my exact needs and this is the engine that I finally settled on..
I wrote a review of my process and how I settled on this engine.

gave support a 4 because there are some issues some people have had with linux and mac that are issues still.

following is my review I posted on my blog at blog.peoplesdns.com but will repost it here.
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I have a somewhat simple idea I want to make into a game. I ‘know’ that I can do it in PHP with a mix of css/ajax/json tied together with JQuery but I would like it to be something that I do not have to maintain as heavily as a browser app where I need to worry about various browsers and what might be coming along in the next incarnation of Firefox or the dreaded IE (which has been a horrendous thorn in my side on every web project I have ever built). I decided that I should look into a game engine for speed and OMG I entered a whole new world of hobby projects, half-baked ideas, expensive solutions, HUGE specialty engines, paid as your go solutions shamelessly pandered like a vanity press (Torque) and then the do-it-yourself engines.

After reading reviews and actually looking through a WHOLE slough of these various engines I came to the conclusion that like everything else there are ‘tools for the job’ and you need to pick the right tool for the exact job at hand while maintaining flexibility for things that you may need to do later and for growth. It is also helpful to work with languages and tools you currently know and enjoy working with. So I came up with some basics for what I need for my project because picking a game engine is perhaps one of the single most important parts of coding a game.

1. Cross platform - windows/linux/mac in that order of preference with at least win/linux
2. scriptable - Lua/Squirrel or Python bindings with good network support
3. large and active community - Busy forums that are helpful where people share code (I personally like to share code when I solve a particularly vexing problem)
4. ability to handle 3d - but NOT specifically a FPS engine (this was a major issue with a lot of the engines I looked at), I am much more interested in third person and or 3d/iso’ish with bounded-selects for my particular game.
5. Free or very cheap - Why on earth would I want to pay a lot of money for something that I would then be limited in my ability to share my enhancements with the community later? (especially when this is a small project with one coder) There are many other ways to make money on software.. Host servers for games, write books, paid support contracts etc.
6. Speed of use and decent learning curve - I do not want to spend a year learning some crazy API or some language some developers made up to create their own games.
7. No click and drag / piecemeal engines - I.E. If an engine states that you just need to click together parts and then fill in some info to create your game I get really suspicious.
8. Customizable - Why would I want my game to look just like someone else’s game and have reviews go “Oh this game is just like ___ but acts sort of like ___ don’t bother because you have seen it all before”

Once I started comparing a lot of the engines to my list they dropped off like flies. So in the end, because of my particular needs and want of simplicity, I was left with OGRE3d and Irrlicht, both of which fit the bill nicely and are well documented and used render engines that are not specifically boxed into one corner or another or limited by insane design schemes and/or unusable for my purposes. While being somewhat simple (Irrlicht is dead simple and I would highly recommend for hacking out quick 3d visualizations). Both engines are specifically for C++, which is all good but after taking a nice close look at my projects needs, and the fact that it really is not that complex graphically, working with optimized C++ is really not a big need as I am thinking I might have at most 20 characters/models on my screen at the most and the rest will interface changes that are done via network. Having to comb through the myriad of C++ libraries that I am only passingly familiar with and having to learn their syntax, quirks and funky compile issues all while ‘also’ learning a render engine left me with a foul taste in my mouth. However I pressed on and started to brush up on my C++ (which I have not used Visual C++ or Code::Blocks in a very long time and both these have changed dramatically since my last foray into C++). Then, I ran across something interesting while perusing the OGRE wiki.

PyOgre is a python binding to Ogre and I started looking into it and thought to myself “hey, I know python and I know a lot of the libraries as well.. this could speed up my development time.. hrm”. PyOgre bindings hook directly into the Ogre libs and Python runs anywhere. This might actually fit the bill, it easily fits into my list of needs and is lightweight enough and has a very good learning curve for me. So to be thorough off I went to the python game resources on the python site and I decided to look into the other engines that are out there for python that may been an even better fit for my particular needs. Most of these are HIGHLY specialized libs for doing things like math visualization or specific bindings to other engines I had already thrown out. Then while combing through the list I found ONE engine (unfortunately) named Panda3D (also see the wikipedia article) (it rises above it’s cheeseball name upon inspection) that seems like a decent fit and I am now in early stage playing around with it. So far I have found sample code for almost all the elements of the game I want to create and it appears to have the full features of other engines as well, though I would not be locked into having to deal with more than I want and can easily crank out a server app using stackless python (which on a low end box could handle many more clients than I could probably find for my game)

So finally at the end of two weeks of downloading, compiling and trying out engines, attempting to interact with the various communities and ducking shyster companies that want to nickel and dime every naive, hobby or wanna-be game maker (which by the way I find deplorable as some companies could actually be discouraging a lot of potential talent from actually creating their games by doing this, thus hurting the industry as a whole) *cough* Torque *cough* I have found that I came full circle back to python (pygame was the first engine I worked on the initial stages of this idea, that was three years ago) and ended up blending some preconceptions I naively had about game engines.

I am left with a choice between two engines that are different but fit the bill.
On one hand I have the very open ended and extensible OGRE via PyOGRE which it easy enough to be up and running with and on the other I have Panda 3d which already has many of the Pathfinding, audio, animation and import modules I need but I could extend it out quickly (and if I want can also program in C++ for parts or all of it)
In a straight comparison to be up and running quickly I am leaning towards Panda3d but I am still doing a little research into PyOGRE. Hopefully my next post I will plop some code and screen shots in here.

In the meantime, I hope this post saves someone some time their search for an engine for a game that is NOT an FPS (sorry they all look the same to me now, and are boring) but it not some 2d 1990 nintendo looking mess.
If you looking to build an RTS (real time strategy) or simulation style game (think ISO’ish) I would recommend you look into what Python has to offer.

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Panda3D rocks...

Posted by: Akta at Apr 15, 2008

This game engine is the easiest to use ive ever seen. You can make a little game in a day from start on if you speak some python and read the manual.

Its very well designed, stable and gives you all the power of python with 'batteries included' (look on python.org if you don't know what that means) and an engine written in c++.

One further good thing is: You have to download just one self-installer and you can start right over. All dependencies are included and you need to do nothing but viewing the samples and start coding your applications.

Panda3D includes very usefools tools: packpanda to make an installer for your game in 5 minutes, pview to view your models, good exporter for blender and maya (and a good converter from the x-format) besides supporting some other formats without animation, pstats that shows you real-time how your application performs and more!

The community is real good too. You get fast answers in the forums or you will find almost all your answers with the search-function. There even are free video courses to download.

I cant say more: This engine rocks.

Edit: Im writing about Panda3D 1.5.0.

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Easy and powerfull

Posted by: XipherX at Apr 21, 2008

I take a look in deep of this engine and I've found how easy could be realize something with a professional feel.
In my opinion one of the best game engine for free.

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it's in python!

Posted by: deg at May 19, 2010

what can i say, it's a complete game engine that does it's rendering in c++ and game logic in python so you get the best of both worlds! Fast performance and, even more important, a fast development cycle.

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Panda3D

Posted by: Azraiyl at Oct 7, 2008

As I write this review (2008-10-07) the engine details are horribly outdated, skim the Panda3D manual for details.

Pros:

The engine is capable to transform more or less any space in any other space. That is extremmly really helpfull if you like to write your own shaders.

There is an exporter Blender. Unfortunately it does not support all the features, Panda3D supports, although Blender is able to provide this informations. Two examples: 1. Blender has the ability to create more than one animation per object. But with the Blender exporter you have to define the start frame and end frame for every animation. 2. The exporter is not able to export binormals, that may be usefull to normal mapping. IMO the source is unreadable but at least it's stable.

The edit, compile, run cycle is extremly short. I personally use only a simple text editor and never had any problem restarting the engine ten times per minute.

If you look a bit closer at the code base you can see that there is an enormous amount of C++ and Python code. Nevertheless I had only some crashs on rare occasions, and most often only on one PC, therefore it is more likely that the graphic driver has bugs.

The engine supports per pixel lighting and some per pixel effects like normal mapping and glow. This support is enabled through a so called AutoShader Generator. Based on the fixed function properties of a node, a per pixel shader is generated (See cons for more details).

There is a mediocre manual, a reference manual (although the most written word is maybe "undocumented") and as a last resort there are some samples. IMO the samples are extremmly good because they show you better what the engine can handle, and some samples show you some andvanced features you can do with shaders.

Supported Sound Libraries are FMOD, OpenAL and Miles.

Beside the intergrated basic physic classes, ODE is supported.

You get a damn good community that answers you more or less every stupid question you may ask.

Cons:

There is a GUI, but is not suited to create some high end GUIs. Better think of it only as a possible starting point.

The engine was written when fixed function GPUs were state of the art. That does not mean that the engine has no shader support. It only means that you don't get very good support for shaders. In the current release it is e.g. impossible to get the same FPS if you replace the fixed function pipeline with a simple shader (only transformation no lighting or textures). Panda3D is not slow (in fact I have done some tests on my own, and Panda3D was more or less every time faster than other well known Open Source 3D engines).

It is not possible to extend the shader generator. If anyone likes to add a new lighting model, it's impossible to extend it from Python. One needs to modify the source directly or subclass it with C++.

No support for geometry shaders or other newer features like texture arrays.

The big players behind Panda3D (Disney and CMU) currently don't care about some newer features, modern 3D engines have. E.g. there is no shadow caster, that can be intergrated into any application.

Finally:

I like to write here a big WARNING.

Panda3D ist not a toy. Again and again new people arrive who only understand a single bit of Python or have heard the word 3D, but don't know what 3D coordinates are for. A lot of people write here, that Panda3D is easy. Yes, it is maybe the easiest 3D engine around, but that does not mean that a 3D engine is simple by definition. Please read the fu..ing samples because they are really helpfull, before you start asking questions on the forum. Thank you.

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Panda 3D from a beginner

Posted by: Galasteno at Oct 12, 2009

I have only recently started looking at programming. I am a 3D artist, and using Blender as my modeling suite, I naturally gravitated towards Python. When I found Panda 3D, I was instantly interested. As I learned to program, I found the manual, and the forum both were extremely beneficial. The community is probably the one feature that made Panda stand out to me. They really helped, and are all very active in the development scene. Panda is a great tool for game design, that just takes a little more effort to learn. I guess it pays off, the learning, in the freedom it allows you.

Thank you ,

Peter Slattery
peterslatteryart.blogspot.com

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very easy to learn to complete what we want

Posted by: lansadik at Feb 10, 2009

1. The sound libary is change to OpenAL, the the physics has intergrated ODE part.
2. The forum is very actively, the question could be respond very soon.
3. Basic tutorial is very well.

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Sheer Awesomness

Posted by: aurilliance at Mar 6, 2009

I enjoy programming as a hobby in my spare time amongst work, uni etc. I have previously done a lot of C + OpenGL programming, writing my own game engine over about 2 years. In it's final stages, this engine had 12000+ lines of code, once compressed/minified.

A while ago, I came across Panda3D. Ever since following their online 'hello world' tutorial in the manual, I have been sold out to Panda. In less than 100 lines, the Panda3D engine could do more than I had spent 2 years and 12000 lines coding.

Admittedly, the Panda3D engine is a much higher level API than OpenGL, as is Python when compared to C, however the simplicity and logical outlay of the engine still defys anything I've worked with before.

It's pythonic works-out-of-the-box functionality is another feature that really impresses me. Reading the online Forum I came across some code another user had written in a different OS, different environment to me. I expected to have to spend at least 1 night fixing compatibility issues just to get the code to work, but after copying and pasting, it worked, literally, within seconds.

The last feature I want to mention is it's wide-ranging support for industry standard extensions. The engine comes pre-packaged with support for many extensions, but if you need something, just check the forum, users regularly post code they have implemented that wraps around professional quality 3rd party libraries. Sound? Panda3D supports FMOD, OpenAL and Miles. Physics? Try ODE, nVidia PhysX, Bullet and Newton! Shading? nVidia Cg is ready to go. Multiple Graphics API's? You bet!

To quote the panda himself, it's sheer awesomness. 5/5

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Amazing engine

Posted by: boundless at Apr 6, 2009

In a 3 months of using this engine I realized it's extremely easy to make small and fast games.Now I'm using it to do a real big game and I know it will make wonderful work for me. It's so easy to write game especially with the support of Python

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Amazing

Posted by: corbo950 at May 17, 2009

I have been a coder for years but have always done Rich Internet Applications so when i decided to make a game i looked into a lot of engines and hands down this one was the best i especially liked the python coding part of it because i knew i was going to have to learn a new coding language no matter what but it only took me a week to learn python where as im sure if i was trying to use something else i would still be trying to learn C++ or Java

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Good learning tool, with real life power

Posted by: Tutunkommon at Jul 23, 2009

I have tried a number of free, as well as having bought game engines in the past. Surprisingly the commercial engine was less complete than the free ones.

Panda3D, however, has been the easiest to learn and implement. Supporting python also makes it easier to work with.

The documentation has a few holes in it, but the forum support is absolutely unparalleled. Questions and answers in the forum frequently feel like a chat discussion with the speed of the reply.

Networking excellent, multi-player support is strong, fast rendering, physics engine, great support of zones-of-interest, the list goes on...

About the only missing thing I have seen is a "level editor", however, there is a blender plug-in that makes exporting objects and scenes from blender into Panda3D's .egg file format very easy to do.

I have abandoned the commercial engine I bought in favor of Panda3D!

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Pandas everywhere

Posted by: Chrism at Sep 14, 2009

Pro's - Free!! Robust. Good community. Lots of tutorials. I found it easy to use.

Con's - Your not going to get the latest features out of this. Don't expect CryEngine graphics or features.

No level editor.

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Abolutely Superb!

Posted by: GrizzLyCRO at Sep 21, 2009

I have some friends in professional game industry, and I have seen bunch of game engines, and i have seen how hard is to code with most of them.

I tried a lot of game engines, they were all good and powerful, but they were also a bit hard to use.
Now that i think about how i wrestled with other engines, something came to my mind. Panda3D does not get in your way. I used for quite some time, and i was never in need of doing workaround for anything.

Panda is so easy to use that even an unexperienced kid could get up with it really fast.

More features are being added all the time, and support is really awesome, user community is very friendly and helpful.

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excellent for both experts and start-ups

Posted by: rlucian at Jan 14, 2010

I've read about most engines featured here as well as in other directories.
I've installed about 10 engines, both paid and free.
For now I've stopped at Panda, and it's probably a good call. Time is to tell.

If you are a hobyst programmer with some experience in any language, if you want to get started with the inner-workings of a game-engine and focus on design and concept rather than selling a mmortspg opera, if you want to see results in the first day of effort and be able to have a game prototype done in less than a week, then Panda3D is for you.

Also, Panda is a great opportunity to learn python, a thing I always planned but never got to it.
If you are looking for features, be advised that Panda3d has a HUGE list of additional features that are not featured on their website. To name a couple: integrated AI library, support for 3D goggles.

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Great Engine!

Posted by: petey1g at Mar 18, 2010

Great Engine but I moved on to Unity3d.
I really liked Panda3d, it was better then alot of engines and I used it for a while, but now that unity 3.0 is comeing out I switched over.

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