Installing/Using Panda 3D, instruction page maybe?

I downloaded Panda 3d -SDK-1.9.1-x64.exe last night as well as pretty much most everything else on the download page.

I extracted and installed Panda3D this morning and all seems to have gone well as far as I can tell. This gave me several installed applications.

I have an Icon labeled “sample.URL”

An icon labeled “Panda manual.URL”

An icon labeled “Panda3d Website”

An icon labeled “Uninstall Panda3D SDK 1.9.1”

I also downloaded last night
Python manuals

manual-1.9.1-cxx.zip
reference-1.9.1-cxx.zip
manual-1.9.1-python.zip
reference-1.9.1-python.zip

These files have all been extracted

Two day ago I downloaded and installed Python 3.5,… I was trying to make us of Multiverse game engine, but I cannot find enough support to get Multiverse to actually run, I gave up on multiverse and went looking for another game engine which led me to here to try Panda.

I also downloaded last night…

panda3d-1.9.1-tools-win64.zip and then extracted and installed this morning.
art-gallery.zip extracted this morning as well.

When I extracted and installed the tools I now appear to have these programs

Bison.exe------------ It makes a blip on my screen if I click on it to run and then nothing
flex.exe… This opens a command window with a curser, no idea what it is as yet though

ppython.exe… not tested yet
ppythonw.exe…not tested yet
python.exe…not tested yet
python.exe…not tested yet

makensis.exe…dsplays window with some code and disappears
NSIS.exe…opens a small white window with nothing in it

Do I need anything else to run Panda3D?

Does Panda3D have some .exe or user interface program to use or do you operate everything through Python?

Is there a step by step walkthrough on Panda3D and the 3rd party tools supplied?

It would appear the Panda3 manuals seem to be online, is there a resource to download all the manuals? Online does not work well for me, I am on an unstable satellite connection out in the middle of nowhere, connection is often a rather iffy thing…

The reason for taking this interest is that I have four teenage children who are all interested in learning more about programming. I myself have been injured and have a bit of time to spend on trying to get them setup with something. I have tried a number of game engines, but I have been unable to ever get any of them to actually run and the kids are getting rather frustrated. This Panda3D seems a bit complex and may be too much for them or I to learn, but I am impressed with your site from the understandability of the information, ease of access and the forum support feature that has actual recent posts, and appears to be good at answering questions when possible.

If I can get this Panda 3D working it will be set up on 5 or 6 of the computers here at the house for myself and the kids to program on.

For now Panda 3D will be used on my old Desktop PC… An old HP Pavilion…Pentium Dual core 2.6 Ghz processor…
Windows 7 home premium service pack 1… 64 bit operating system… 6 gigs upper memory. .5 terabyte hard drive… I have no idea what my video or sound cards are in this…

If and when it gets put on the kids computers Panda3D will be running on… Gateway laptops running windows 8…64 bit system… Intel Celeron dual 1.8 Ghz processors… 4 Gigs upper memory… 380 gig hard drives… Unsure of graphics or sound cards…

If Panda3d works out well I would also eventually put it on my laptop… Dell Inspiron… quad core 2.6 Ghz processor… Windows 8… 64 bit system… 6 gigs upper memory… 48o gig hard drive and again I have no idea on video or sound on that…

Any advice would be appreciated, if I can get this Panda 3D up and running this weekend my kids will be in heaven… Well, as long as the horses don’t escape again… the kids do not like searching the countryside for the horses… lol…

I have been unable to find any Panda3D tutorials as yet, but I managed to find Panda3D demos.

When I opened the page there was a warning at the top of it…

Warning

The Panda3D plugin does not appear to be installed! You will need it in order to run the demos.
Please follow this link to download it.

So, all of the stuff I have downloaded and installed does not yet give me the needed files and programs to run Panda3D?

A resource of exactly each file to download and what order to download and install them all the way to running the program for the first time would be really handy, a step by step including everything from the start on would be very handy.

It is like having some unknown person call me from some unknown location on earth and have them point to a light and ask me to turn it on for them. … I have no idea what area of the world to head to, no idea house or building, no idea what light or switch, all I know is that out many billions of bulbs on the earth there is one that I need to turn on.

This is how I would describe where I am currently at with the Panda 3D, and as yet I am unable to find any directions to get started on it. So, I am hoping that someone can point in the general direction of the light that needs to be turned on and maybe even give me an approximate distance, I could at least get started that way.

I finally found the Panda3D manual page, now I can go through the installation steps and see what is what… Finally getting somewhere… awesome…

The exe files you referenced are mainly irrelevant, except for python and ppython. Panda3D comes with its own version of python (on windows). Panda3D has no user interface, so you control everything with python or c++.

You already downloaded the manual (manual-1.9.1-python.zip), the api reference is named reference-1.9.1-python.zip

You have to run the Panda3D Demos (in general, any panda3D program) with pandas builtin python. You should add the path to the panda SDK to your system path, so that in your command line shell you can type “ppython some_file.py”

You can also associate .py files with pandas python by setting the ppython exe as the default program to open those files.

Notice that you really only have to download the SDK, the other stuff is not really required (except for the offline manual maybe).

Thank you for the reply, helpful, yeah I had come to the conclusion that I had downloaded far more than I needed, I finally found the panda tutorial section and things have been going great since.

I still have quite a learning curve ahead, some of what I read might as well be written in Chinese as for how much of it I understand, but with the tutorial I and internet I figure it out.

So far I am quite impressed with the software, the site and this forum, quite handy.