I started to program with VB 5 years ago, then I learned Java and php. I think I’ve learned a lot. Now I want to make some 3D games. First I tryed Java3D(Yuck). Than I tested JOGL (OpenGL for Java). It was better, but hard ,too. Do you think it would be easier to make my stuff with panda3D? I gained some experience with Python a few years ago and desided not to learn so much of it, because I thought I can do everything I need with Java. So:
Is panda3D a good alternative vor me?
2)As you can possibly guess English isn’t my first language. Are there any German Tutorials, Documentations or manuals for Panda3D?
Python is an interpreted language. Is it much slower than Java?
I pleased you for a quick answer, because I want to work on my projects in my holidays and they aren’t so long…
Download and then check out the example code in the folder Samples under the main installation place.
At the moment the documentation is not very complete, however once you start playing with Panda3D then it will all fit into place.
I have not seen any translated documentation, but your English seems good enough to read through the current docs. If you have any problems then people are always happy to help on this board Or try the IRC channel #panda3d on irc.freenode.net - This channel is not busy but we are always hoping more people will join in!
Now thats a good question to which I do not know the answer to. Although you might want to know that the Panda3D core is written in c++ and your only using Python to access that core. So the time the program spends in python can be very small. I am not sure how Java’s libs are handled.
As I said at the start, just give it a go and have fun!
Python compiles to byte-code just like Java and is run on its own virtual-machine, however, the difference is mainly Python is usually only compiled to byte-code at run-time.
You can complete this step once by compiling all your .py files to byte-code files which will shorten the startup time of your programs.
I’m not sure your going to find benchmarks comparing Python and Java. Your mileage will vary. Python 2.4 is significantly faster than earlier versions of Python, however, we still aren’t using Python 2.4 in the default distributed version of Panda3d although we soon will be.
The main problem aren’t my English skills. The main point is, that reading English textes is very arduous for me. So it takes a long time to read English books/manuals.
However, I 've downloaded panda3D and try the first tutorial, the panda in green grass. It works great. I think I try to read the whole manual. Maybe it becomes easier over times.
Or try the IRC channel