Irrlicht 3D Engine
 
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Irrlicht Engine 1.8 API documentation

Introduction

Welcome to the Irrlicht Engine API documentation. Here you'll find any information you'll need to develop applications with the Irrlicht Engine. If you are looking for a tutorial on how to start, you'll find some on the homepage of the Irrlicht Engine at irrlicht.sourceforge.net or inside the SDK in the examples directory.

The Irrlicht Engine is intended to be an easy-to-use 3d engine, so this documentation is an important part of it. If you have any questions or suggestions, just send a email to the author of the engine, Nikolaus Gebhardt (niko (at) irrlicht3d.org).

Links

Namespaces: A very good place to start reading the documentation.
Class list: List of all classes with descriptions.
Class members: Good place to find forgotten features.

Short example

A simple application, starting up the engine, loading a Quake 2 animated model file and the corresponding texture, animating and displaying it in front of a blue background and placing a user controlable 3d camera would look like the following code. I think this example shows the usage of the engine quite well:

#include <irrlicht.h>
using namespace irr;
int main()
{
// start up the engine
IrrlichtDevice *device = createDevice(video::EDT_DIRECT3D8,
video::IVideoDriver* driver = device->getVideoDriver();
scene::ISceneManager* scenemgr = device->getSceneManager();
device->setWindowCaption(L"Hello World!");
// load and show quake2 .md2 model
scenemgr->getMesh("quake2model.md2"));
// if everything worked, add a texture and disable lighting
if (node)
{
node->setMaterialTexture(0, driver->getTexture("texture.bmp"));
node->setMaterialFlag(video::EMF_LIGHTING, false);
}
// add a first person shooter style user controlled camera
scenemgr->addCameraSceneNodeFPS();
// draw everything
while(device->run() && driver)
{
driver->beginScene(true, true, video::SColor(255,0,0,255));
scenemgr->drawAll();
driver->endScene();
}
// delete device
device->drop();
return 0;
}
bool drop() const
Drops the object. Decrements the reference counter by one.
The Irrlicht device. You can create it with createDevice() or createDeviceEx().
virtual bool run()=0
Runs the device.
virtual void setWindowCaption(const wchar_t *text)=0
Sets the caption of the window.
virtual scene::ISceneManager * getSceneManager()=0
Provides access to the scene manager.
virtual video::IVideoDriver * getVideoDriver()=0
Provides access to the video driver for drawing 3d and 2d geometry.
Axis aligned bounding box in 3d dimensional space.
Definition aabbox3d.h:22
The Scene Manager manages scene nodes, mesh recources, cameras and all the other stuff.
virtual void drawAll()=0
Draws all the scene nodes.
virtual IAnimatedMesh * getMesh(const io::path &filename)=0
Get pointer to an animateable mesh. Loads the file if not loaded already.
virtual IAnimatedMeshSceneNode * addAnimatedMeshSceneNode(IAnimatedMesh *mesh, ISceneNode *parent=0, s32 id=-1, const core::vector3df &position=core::vector3df(0, 0, 0), const core::vector3df &rotation=core::vector3df(0, 0, 0), const core::vector3df &scale=core::vector3df(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f), bool alsoAddIfMeshPointerZero=false)=0
Adds a scene node for rendering an animated mesh model.
virtual ICameraSceneNode * addCameraSceneNodeFPS(ISceneNode *parent=0, f32 rotateSpeed=100.0f, f32 moveSpeed=0.5f, s32 id=-1, SKeyMap *keyMapArray=0, s32 keyMapSize=0, bool noVerticalMovement=false, f32 jumpSpeed=0.f, bool invertMouse=false, bool makeActive=true)=0
Adds a camera scene node with an animator which provides mouse and keyboard control appropriate for f...
Scene node interface.
Definition ISceneNode.h:41
void setMaterialTexture(u32 textureLayer, video::ITexture *texture)
Sets the texture of the specified layer in all materials of this scene node to the new texture.
Definition ISceneNode.h:436
void setMaterialFlag(video::E_MATERIAL_FLAG flag, bool newvalue)
Sets all material flags at once to a new value.
Definition ISceneNode.h:425
Interface to driver which is able to perform 2d and 3d graphics functions.
virtual bool beginScene(bool backBuffer=true, bool zBuffer=true, SColor color=SColor(255, 0, 0, 0), const SExposedVideoData &videoData=SExposedVideoData(), core::rect< s32 > *sourceRect=0)=0
Applications must call this method before performing any rendering.
virtual ITexture * getTexture(const io::path &filename)=0
Get access to a named texture.
virtual bool endScene()=0
Presents the rendered image to the screen.
Class representing a 32 bit ARGB color.
Definition SColor.h:202
Main header file of the irrlicht, the only file needed to include.
Everything in the Irrlicht Engine can be found in this namespace.
Definition aabbox3d.h:13

Irrlicht can load a lot of file formats automaticly, see irr::scene::ISceneManager::getMesh() for a detailed list. So if you would like to replace the simple blue screen background by a cool Quake 3 Map, optimized by an octree, just insert this code somewhere before the while loop:

// add .pk3 archive to the file system
device->getFileSystem()->addZipFileArchive("quake3map.pk3");
// load .bsp file and show it using an octree
scenemgr->getMesh("quake3map.bsp"));
virtual io::IFileSystem * getFileSystem()=0
Provides access to the virtual file system.
virtual _IRR_DEPRECATED_ bool addZipFileArchive(const c8 *filename, bool ignoreCase=true, bool ignorePaths=true)
Adds a zip archive to the file system.
virtual IMeshSceneNode * addOctreeSceneNode(IAnimatedMesh *mesh, ISceneNode *parent=0, s32 id=-1, s32 minimalPolysPerNode=512, bool alsoAddIfMeshPointerZero=false)=0
Adds a scene node for rendering using a octree to the scene graph.

As you can see, the engine uses namespaces. Everything in the engine is placed into the namespace 'irr', but there are also 5 sub namespaces. You can find a list of all namespaces with descriptions at the namespaces page. This is also a good place to start reading the documentation. If you don't want to write the namespace names all the time, just use all namespaces like this:

using namespace core;
using namespace scene;
using namespace video;
using namespace io;
using namespace gui;

There is a lot more the engine can do, but I hope this gave a short overview over the basic features of the engine. For more examples, please take a look into the examples directory of the SDK.