Another Graphics Engine In Panda3D Other Than the Default?

Is this possible? Well is this possible to utilize the OGRE graphics engine in Panda3D? If you would you have to use Python Ogre? Is Python Ogre as strong and equipped with as much features as the first one? Lets say someone decides to equip OGRE into the panda library as the graphics engine . . . will the functions meant for the graphics engine still work while scripting in python? I’m just very curious because I’m not exactly “impressed” with what Ive seen of Panda3D’s default Graphics engine. :confused:

In terms of graphics capabilities, Panda and Ogre are pretty much equivalent–any effect you can do in one, you can do in the other. So I have to wonder what you’re looking for in Panda that you don’t think you see.

But to answer your actual question, no, it’s not possible to use Ogre to render Panda’s graphics. That would be silly.

David

This is a very common remark among newcomers. Incidentally, like you, they never say what particular feature they are missing which indicates that you are new to the process of CG development, also the fact that you are considering to combine Ogre3D with Panda reinforces this impression. Not trying to be rude here, just contextualizing.

Let’s take this masterpiece of mine:

I bet you are not impressed with this, either. It’s done with Photoshop, the industry standard, but you’ll agree that judging the capabilities of said package based on the pic above would be silly.

And that’s all there is to it. The main user of Panda is Disney, which does games for children; they don’t use any advanced features because they target very low profile hardware, so you won’t see anything around making use of any last-gen features, not even prev-gen features.

But even though Disney doesn’t use these advanced features, people have put them there over the years. You may ask, then, why don’t you see other games that use these features being developed by studios other than Disney. My subjective opinion on this is that the reason is historical, Panda always had a focus on Python and professional studios prefer c++ (Disney being an exception). But now Panda is starting to get well documented on the c++ side too, I expect you will see them pop up in a couple of years.

If you don’t know what particular features you are looking for (it’s normal at first). You could show us an screenshot of what you’d like to accomplish and somebody will tell you how to go about it, but I assure you, there’s nothing that can be done with Ogre that cannot be done with Panda, and I tell you this after checking the feature list of Ogre. Panda3D also does a lot of things automatically for you in the graphics department that Ogre doesn’t, however deciding whether Ogre3D is more suited to your project is up to you.

:smiley:

But i have 1 more question . . . why do people even consider using c++ with panda when python is a simpler language? Is c++ faster or stronger in anyway? (in terms of panda scripting)

One reason could be that they are already proficient with c++ and don’t want/need to start learning python.

I think it is because many people are very sceptical about writing a game in Python. Part of the reason is that many people see it as scripting language and not as a real programming language.
Also, because Python is slow, compared to C++. (However, as all the processor-intensive functionality of Panda3D is implemented in C++, this is not an issue.)

I am currently facing that issue right now as my team is debating over irrlicht vs panda. Because we are trying to make a city simulator we have somewhat unique issues and I am trying to be convincing that panda will be fast enough.

Croxis, you should probably create a “must have list” of features with your team plus any questions you might have, and post a new “can panda do this” thread to both forums and I am sure the community will be happy to oblige.

Oh I know it can do what is needed, the question is speed :stuck_out_tongue:

There’s a recent thread with an actual comparison test between panda3d and if i remember well exactly irrlicht, although it was debating over ogre as well. It’s brief, but you’ll get an idea.

If i recall, it was head to head in DX and p3d was twice as good on opengl/win32, but that might have been just an issue with the opengl implementation on windows.
Better try to find it or i’ll find it for you if you cannot locate it.

The other question, which is often overlooked but I think is the much more important question, is developer speed.

Frankly, any graphics engine can achieve any effect, and if you work long enough at it, you ought to be able to eliminate any bottlenecks from the engine and get right to the hardware limit of performance.

The big question is how hard to you have to work at it to get it to do that for you. And how hard do you have to work at it to get it to do just ordinary mundane tasks where performance isn’t necessarily an issue. And how hard do you have to work at it to try out a prototype just to see if you even like an idea or not?

All of these are vital questions. Time is money, and developer time is usually the most expensive resource in a project. Computer hardware is cheap compared to programmers and artists.

So, I’d recommend choosing an engine based on the ease with which you can make it do what you want it to do, rather than any other less-meaningful metric.

David