This page is intended to serve as a helpful guide for those who love Panda3D and want to get involved, but are not sure where to start. As Panda3D is an open-source project, contributions from people like you are the driving force behind Panda3D’s development. We’re looking for contributors from a diverse range of skill sets, beyond just programming. Here are some of the ways in which you can help make Panda3D and its community even more amazing.
Remember, you can always approach us on Discord or the forums if you have any questions. And if you’d like more reading material, check out the excellent guide at https://opensource.guide/how-to-contribute/.
Be part of the community
By taking an active role in the community, you help to foster a welcoming environment which encourages developers and supports them with their efforts. Feel free to share your project and talk about ways you’ve tackled difficult issues, so that others may benefit from your experience. We welcome your participation in discussions on how Panda3D can improve further, and we are also grateful for people reviewing bug reports and pull requests made by other contributors.Finally, you can add to the growing ecosystem of tools and libraries surrounding Panda3D by developing some of your own. By publishing your libraries on GitHub and PyPI, the rest of the world can easily take advantage of your work. Your additions might inspire developers to include such a feature into the Panda3D codebase, thanks to your work!
Outreach
By sharing your experiences with Panda3D on social media and in other game development communities, you can spread the word about Panda3D and help attract more potential users and contributors. If you’re an artist, using your skills to build an impressive demo will show off Panda3D’s strengths. Participating in game jams is also a great way to both hone your skills and show others what Panda3D can do. And we’d love to help out if you’d like to give a talk at a local conference or user group!
Write documentation
Having high-quality documentation is vitally important for open-source projects. The manual is the main document that people use to learn Panda3D, but many aspects of its rich feature set remain sparsely documented. Often, fresh eyes can have a better perspective on the right order and depth in which concepts should be introduced than people who are already intimately familiar with the workings of the engine. Furthermore, different people learn best in different ways, so we’d like to have a great diversity of materials made available. Share sample code, recipes, video tutorials, or other useful resources to help others on their journey.
To learn about the process of contributing to the manual, check out this guide [link forthcoming].
Development
Of course, developing third-party libraries is not the only way to add to Panda3D’s usefulness. Panda3D is nothing without having people report and fix bugs, discuss potential improvements and contribute code to the Git repository itself. We welcome contributions of all sizes, from the simple addition of a unit test to a thorough architectural restructuring. We do ask you that you first familiarize yourself with our development process[link] before jumping right in with a code contribution. Even if you have a big addition in mind, it may be helpful to start by contributing a simple bugfix or a unit test to get acquainted with the process.
If you’re already familiar with contributing to projects on GitHub, you can jump right into the list of issues we’ve curated that we think are good issues to get started with.
Financial support
Join the ranks of our awesome sponsors by supporting the project using a monthly or one-time donation. We are immensely grateful for all our backers whose generosity keeps our efforts funded, by helping us cover hardware expenses and pay for additional development time.
Visit our campaign on OpenCollective to find out more!
We are very grateful that you’re considering helping us out! Be sure to hit us up on Discord if you want to ask any questions, share your love or criticism of Panda3D, or if you just want to say hi. We can’t wait to hear from you!