I’m currently working on the properties editor of the scene editor. There you can also set the filepath and name. So, if you simply enter the name of your name2path system in one of them, it can be exported that way with the custom exporter for your JSON format.
Sick. Can’t wait. 
Maybe you can make an editor like Godot?
I think the editor which designed by Godot is really easy to use.It almost included all features that engines need.
BTW, can you use tobspr’s RenderPipeline?
A more complete editor like those of Godot, Unity, UE or the like is planed. This editor though will work kinda as a frame which will hold all my individual editors like the Scene Editor, DirectGui Designer and Node editor and probably plenty of others when they get created.
I keep it that way since having a simple monolithic editor won’t suite the engine very well, keeping it modular is in my opinion more useful for a larger audience. For example if you’re a larger team which has people dedicated to specific tasks, not all of them need the full set of editors and so can simply pick and combine those they need to create a workflow they see fit.
On the other hand if you are in a small group or individual, you can simply pick the “frame” version which contains everything.
That also means, that there will be more and more smaller editors coming up first until the most important ones are done. After that I will start on the “frame” app. Note though, that I do not have an estimation for when everything will be ready since I’m just a single developer and my spare time is limited.
I do try to post all updates here as soon as they are made in case you want to get the news quicker:
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If I may say, I do rather like this approach. A good idea, I think! 
That is very uplifting.Thanks for your hard and generous work.
I have tried your project, but it seems that everything is in its infancy.
Please keep up working,I think Panda3D should get an editor.
No offence, nobody will like a game engine without an editor.
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Thank you and indeed, since it’s only a few weeks old, it’s definitely pre-alpha status at best with plenty of bugs to fix and features to add. But I wanted to release it fast and often to get feedback from the community and make sure it’s will become a useful tool in the future. So even now reporting bugs and requesting features is very welcome.
Oh and regarding you question regarding the render pipeline, I guess it can be used, I haven’t looked at it in a long time though. So I’m not sure what exactly has to be done to integrate it. I probably will include a configuration to use simple-pbr sometime soon since that’s what I use sometimes and works well too. While integrating that I may also take a look at Tobias’ RP.
The editor is the soul of any engine. It would be very cool if Panda 3d was launched through the editor. And ready-made assets fps controller. Start menu. Save - load - start the game. Location transition. Opening doors with a key. For the development of the engine, this would be a push. Many people stop at this. But it’s just a standard. As the initial scan in the html file.
Thanks for the kind words and suggestions. Actually your suggestions do fit for the FRAME, which is the application used to load and connect this and other editors together. Which reminds me, I should open up a dedicated forum post for it since it’s probably ready to be shown a bit more publicly here too.
This application already has ways to install additional parts and I actually thought about how to integrate things like a character controller and other ready-made assets. It also lets you create a basic Panda3D application and it won’t be to hard to implement a start button within the editor so, I’ll definitely put it on my todo list.
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I notice that you are working hard on it,really impressive.
Maybe you can just integerate simplepbr and blend2bam or other something if you had problems with tobspr RenderPipeline.That could reduce a lot of work.
Or…Maybe you can just modify and immigrate the editor of Godot?I don’t know if it could make things easier.
Yes.I don’t understand why panda3d doesn’t have an editor in 2022.It is really a long period since panda3d released.
Panda is actually a framework, and theoretically should not be linked to a graphic editor. Since the needs of all game developers are different, in order to get a development environment using a graphical editor, you need to generalize a variety of game design approaches into something unique. It certainly won’t be as flexible as before. Don’t forget to use, with positioning difficulties. - The Scene Graph Browser — Panda3D Manual
In general, the blender is currently ready to replace the scene editor, if that’s what you meant. There are different editors.
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Panda was never intended to be a full-featured game engine, comparing Panda to UE/Unity is like comparing i3wm to KDE. One restricts you to a few limits, but gives you something to start off out of the box whilst one leaves you empty and gives you a fresh clean slate with total control to work on. Panda is a graphics framework and UE/Unity are game engines with a built-in graphics framework. In Panda, you (sort of) build your own game engine, much like Rust’s Bevy, C++'s BGFX and Java’s LWJGL.
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This… Isn’t accurate.
Panda has features far beyond those of a graphics framework: it provides graphics (or course), event-handling, input-handling, mathematical elements, a finite state machine system, collision-handling, networking, and more I daresay besides!
In short, it’s very much a fully-featured game-engine–just a code-oriented one. i.e. One without an editor.
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That’s right, having a tool is not a feature of a full-fledged 3d engine. At the moment, panda has no templates for typical applications, fps, rts and, accordingly, there are no tools that will work with this logic. In addition, the question remains open about what exactly is a visual editor in your understanding. Or why, for example, blender is ignored as an editor.
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Integrating simplepbr is on the todo list. there are some bugs that have to be resolved to make it usable, but next to providing a first binary release, this is one of my highest priorities.
That wouldn’t make things more easy at all. Godots editor is written with a different framework and probably even different language, so in the end everything has to be redone anyways. If there are parts that would fit, inspiration can be taken from every editor.
Right, it is a framework, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have a graphical editor. Some people just prefer to do things visually before diving into code and such an editor will help with that. It may also be viable for debugging certain graphical problems which may or may not be visible through other tools like your modelling tools.
It definitely will never be a requirement to use with panda3d but it will be a valuable addition nevertheless, especially since more and more people expect such tools from modern engines nowadays coming from unity, godot or others. If whoever uses Panda3d prefers a code only way, nothing’s in his way to do, but extending the choices of how to use the engine is in my eyes a good thing.
I’d say it is a feature, not a required but optional one, but still a feature.
Blender is probably the best tool if it comes to model creation for panda3d and I’d also always recommend to use it as it also perfectly compliments the scene editor. Though, in regards to the scene editor, it does differ in a few spots. Just to list a few:
- it doesn’t use pandas (or the simplepbr) rendering pipeline.
- Some features won’t translate 1:1 from blender to panda, like collision and camera settings.
- In the scene editor, you can preview your shaders.
There are and probably will even be more in the future.
In the end, the scene editor is also an important part for the frame project, since it will enable people new to coding to get into panda3d and create games with it. Which hopefully helps growing and sustaining the already awesome community we have here.
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I do agree!
To have a scene-editor could be quite a boon for Panda and for the community, I very much feel.
I will admit, in using Blender a fair bit as a level-building tool I think that I have indeed run into some of these issues.
Taking into account the arguments that you have given, I fully agree with you.
My thought is a little different. It consists in the following: how many editors do we need to be happy?
Every year we forget that we already have an editor.
Every year we start that it would be nice to have another level editor.
I strongly support what you say.
Yes,panda3d is a framework.But who would say it MUST be a framework？
Like what I said before, panda3d has released for a long time.It should have got great progress.But what we can see now？Several samples with lacking plenty of features and they have not been updated for almost 10 years.Sometimes we make minor repairs, then we just announce it is a new version.
It is time to make change.Believe me,nobody like writing a large amount of code while others can achieve same or better goals just by a few mouse clicks.
Many will regard blender as an editor of panda3d.It doesn’t make any sense.Does panda3d support the models with full features which are exported by blender？The answer is no.
No offence,What if unity didn’t support full features which the unity editor has？Don’t you think it is a joke？I admit that many enthusiastic developers like @Moguri made a great job.We appreciate what they have done.But it is not enough.
Panda3d worth a “Godot like” editor with full features and easy to use.
Why we still need a new editor every year since we’ve already got many?
Well,let’s think about this:
Why Godot,Unity and UE5 don’t make new editor in every year?
I think the answer is,we can not be satisfied until we get a real good one.
We appreciate those enthusiastc developer’s work.But,honesty,The editors which made in the past just can not be compared with Godot.Most of them are outdated or designed only for specific goal.They are poor documented and won’t be maintenanced.
We do expect an user-friendly editor with full featured.Godot’s editor is a good example.