Horde3D - Next-Generation Graphics Engine

Current Features

The following features are implemented in the current release

General Features

Powerful graphics engine designed to meet the requirements of next-generation games
Shader driven architecture with SM 2.0 compatible hardware as a minimum requirement
Simple and lightweight overall design with very few dependencies, avoiding complexity where possible
Clean object-oriented C++ code
Simple and intuitive C-style DLL interface for easy integration with virtually any programming language
Cross-platform compatible using OpenGL as rendering API
Suitable for Augmented Reality (AR) and stereo applications
Functionality for easy integration with game engines and other middleware like physics engines

Resource Features

Robust resource management for avoiding unnecessary loading of data
Garbage collection for handling resource dependencies
Interface for loading data from files, streams or any type of archives
Dynamic reloading of resources for more efficient development
Loading of models and animations from optimized binary formats
Loading of materials from a custom XML format
Loading of shaders from a custom XML format including vertex and fragment shaders written in GLSL
Loading of 2D and cubemap textures in jpg, png, tga, bmp, psd and HDR formats
Loading of pipelines to quickly switch rendering techniques (e.g. from forward to deferred shading)

Scene Features

Scene graph structure with hierarchical transformations and bounding volumes
Unified scene system where world, models and skeletons are just scene graph branches and no special objects
Loading of scene graph branches from XML files with complete orthogonality to API functions
Optimized frustum culling on the scene graph using AABB trees
Occlusion culling
Level of detail support
Possibility to attach scene nodes to joints (e.g. for character props)
Access to vertex data for collision detection and interoperability with physics engines
Ray collision queries and node picking

Animation Features

Unified animation system working directly on scene graph
Keyframe animation for joints and meshes
Skeletal animation with up to 4 weights per vertex for articulated models
Layered animation blending and mixing using masks and additive channels
Inter-frame interpolation for smooth animations
Access to joint data for dynamic animations and ragdoll physics
Morph targets for facial animation and lip synchronization

Visual Features

XML based customizable rendering pipeline with allocatable render targets and commands for rapid testing of different rendering techniques
Postprocessing framework for effects like bloom, DOF or motion blur
Support for forward rendering and different deferred shading techniques
Support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) textures and lighting
Support for almost all modern rendering techniques, including normal-mapped phong lighting and parallax mapping
Support for real-time reflections and other techniques that require several cameras for rendering
Realtime shadows based on Parallel Split Shadow Maps
Shaders for materials and light source interaction
Software skinning and vertex shader skinning for rendering hundreds of animated characters
Fully integrated particle systems that can cast shadows and receive other effects like motion blur
Overlays for rendering GUI elements and font

Tool Features

Powerful Collada Converter for importing model data and animation from many widely used modelling packages
Calculation of tangent space basis for bump mapping
Optimization of geometry for GPU cache

Powerful editor for composing scenes and developing shaders and rendering techniques

Hardware requirements

Horde3D requires an OpenGL 2.0 compatible graphics card with support for floating point buffers like a GeForce 6 series card or Radeon 9500.

To assure best compatibility, the engine is usually tested on different NVidia and ATI hardware cofigurations at the Multimedia Lab of the University of Augsburg.