Irrlicht Engine (open source)

[Tami]

The [url=\"http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/\"]Irrlicht Engine[/url] is an open source high performance realtime 3D engine written and usable in C++ and also available for .NET languages. It is completely cross-platform, using D3D, OpenGL and its own software renderer, and has all of the state-of-the-art features which can be found in commercial 3d engines.
We've got a huge active community, and there are lots of projects in development that use the engine. You can find enhancements for Irrlicht all over the web, like alternative terrain renderers, portal renderers, exporters, world layers, tutorials, editors, language bindings for java, perl, ruby, basic, python, lua, and so on. And best of all: It's completely free.

Features
The Irrlicht Engine is a cross-platform high performance realtime 3D engine written in C++. It is a powerful high level API for creating complete 3D and 2D applications like games or scientific visualizations. It comes with an excellent documentation and integrates all the state-of-the-art features for visual representation like dynamic shadows, particle systems, character animation, indoor and outdoor technology, and collision detection. All this is accessible through a well designed C++ interface, which is extremely easy to use.

Its main features are: (Note that the engine is currently in development. Take a look at the [url=\"http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/development.html\"]development site[/url] to see the progress.)

* High performance realtime 3D rendering using Direct3D and OpenGL
* Platform independent. Runs on Windows95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Linux and MacOS.
* Huge built-in and extensible material library with vertex and pixel shader support
* Seamless indoor and outdoor mixing through highly customizeable scene mangagment.
* Character animation system with skeletal and morph target animation.
* Particle effects, billboards, light maps, environment mapping, stencil buffer shadows, and lots of other special effects. [more]
* .NET language binding which makes the engine available to all .NET languages like C#, VisualBasic, and Delphi.NET.
* Two platform and driver independent fast software renderers included. They have different properties (speed vs. quality) and feature everything needed: perspective correct texture mapping, bilinear filtering, sub pixel correctness, z-buffer, gouraud shading, alpha-blending and transparency, fast 2D drawing and more.
* Powerful, customizeable and easy to use 2D GUI System with Buttons, Lists, Edit boxes, ..
* 2D drawing functions like alpha blending, color key based blitting, font drawing and mixing 3D with 2D graphics.
* Clean, easy to understand and well documentated API with lots of examples and tutorials.
* Written in pure C++ and totally object orientated.
* Direct import of common mesh file formats: Maya (.obj), 3DStudio (.3ds), COLLADA (.dae), DeleD (.dmf), Milkshape (.ms3d), Quake 3 levels (.bsp), Quake2 models (.md2), Microsoft DirectX (.X)...
* Direct import of Textures: Windows Bitmap (.bmp), Portable Network Graphics (.png), Adobe Photoshop (.psd), JPEG File Interchange Format (.jpg), Truevision Targa (.tga), ZSoft Painbrush (.pcx)...
* Fast and easy collision detection and response.
* Optimized fast 3D math and container template libraries.
* Directly reading from (compressed) archives. (.zip)
* Integrated fast XML parser.
* Unicode support for easy localisation.
* Works with Microsofts VisualStudio6.0™, VisualStudio.NET 7.0-8.0™, Metrowerks Codewarrior, and Bloodshed Dev-C++ with g++3.2-4.0.
* The engine is open source and totally free. You can debug it, fix bugs and even change things you do not like. And you do not have to publish your changes: The engine is licensed under the zlib licence, not the GPL or the LGPL.

License
The license of the Irrlicht Engine is based on the zlib/libpng license, only the name and the authors name have been replaced. Even though this license does not require you to mention that you are using the Irrlicht Engine in your product, an acknowledgement would be highly appreciated.

Please note that the Irrlicht Engine is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group and the zlib. This means that if you use the Irrlicht Engine in your product, you must acknowledge somewhere in your documentation that you've used the IJG code. It would also be nice to mention that you use the Irrlicht Engine and the zlib. See the README files in the jpeglib and the zlib for further informations.

The Irrlicht Engine License

Copyright © 2002-2005 Nikolaus Gebhardt

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.
2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.
3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.