Don't mind the mess!
We're currently in the process of migrating the Panda3D Manual to a new service. This is a temporary layout in the meantime.
Just Works, Right out of the Box
No-hassle install:
- Convenient installer packages for Windows, macOS and Linux
- Supports Windows versions all the way from Windows XP to Windows 10
- Supports Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" through macOS 10.13 "High Sierra"
- Only one external dependency: working graphics driver
- Sample programs run right out of Start Menu
- No compilation step needed
Full Python Integration
Automatically-generated wrappers expose full functionality of the engine.
- All Python versions from 2.6 to newest 3.7 supported
- Highly optimized: all core functionality in C++
- Thoroughly-tested: two commercial MMOs in Python
- Panda3D structures garbage collected when using Python
- Manual and sample programs use Python
Exposes Full Power of Graphics API
Modern OpenGL/DirectX features exposed directly to Panda3D user:
- High-level shader languages: Cg, GLSL
- Powerful interface between shaders and engine
- Support for render-to-texture, multiple render targets
- Use of depth/shadow/stencil textures
- Support for tessellation and compute shaders
Shader Generation
Many advanced rendering techniques now fully automatic:
- Special Maps: Normal Map, Gloss Map, Glow Map
- HDR Rendering: Tone Mapping, Bloom Filter
- Cel Shading: Threshold Lighting, Inking
- Shadow Mapping
- Fullscreen filters such as Bloom, Cartoon Inking, Volumetric Lightning, Blur/Sharpen and Ambient Occlusion, as well as the ability to use your own
- More to come
3D Pipeline
Get models from your 3d modeller to Panda3D easily:
- Powerful EGG/BAM format
- EGG exporters for Maya, Blender and 3ds Max
- Support for other 3d formats (collada, x, lwo, obj, dxf, wrl, flt)
- Converters between different 3d formats and EGG
Audio
Several options for adding sounds to your game:
- Support for the OpenAL audio engine
- Support for the FMOD audio engine
- Support for the Miles audio engine
Physics
Several options for physics simulation:
- Built-in simple physics engine
- Support for the Bullet physics engine
- Support for the ODE physics engine
Particle Effects
Panda3D has its own Particle System:
- Particle effects can be stored in text files
- Particle editor included for creating and editing particle effects
GUI
Panda3D comes with a set of tools for the creation of a graphical interface:
- Native DirectGUI system
- Efficient text rendering system
- Various third-party library options
Artificial Intelligence
Simple AI library "PandaAI" included:
- Steering behaviors: Seek, Flee, Pursue, Evade, Wander, Flock, Obstacle Avoidance, Path Following
- Path Finding
- Navigation Mesh generator for EGG files
Performance Monitoring
Powerful performance monitoring and optimization tools:
- Identifies bottlenecks, both CPU and GPU
- CPU time use decomposed into more than 250 categories
- Counts meshes, polygons, textures, transforms, state changes, etc
- Allows user-defined CPU-usage categories
- Tools for batching and state-change minimization
- Tools to merge textures and minimize texture switches
- Times draw calls using GPU timer queries
Debugging Tools
Heavy emphasis on error tolerance and debuggable code:
- Extreme resistance to crashing, even when errors are made
- More than 5000 assertion-checks to catch errors early
- Reference-counted data structures minimize memory leaks
- Many tools to examine internal state (one shown here)
Mature, Complete System
Mature system used to deliver several commercial games. Contains everything you need, not just the "sexy" stuff:
- Converters for a number of file formats
- Font file importers
- Tools to package games into redistributables
- Means to pack art assets into encrypted bundles
- Lots of other boring but essential stuff