Panda3D is a game engine, a framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C++ programs. Panda3D is open-source and free for any purpose, including commercial ventures, thanks to its liberal license. To learn more about Panda3D's capabilities, visit the gallery and the feature list. To learn how to use Panda3D, check the documentation resources. If you get stuck, ask for help from our active community.
Panda3D is licensed under the Modified BSD License. See the LICENSE file for more details.
Please ensure that you build Panda3D with Python 3.11.9.
You can build Panda3D with the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015, 2017, 2019 or 2022 compiler, which can be downloaded for free from the Visual Studio site. You will also need to install the Windows SDK, and if you intend to target Windows Vista, you will also need the Windows 8.1 SDK.
You will also need the thirdparty dependency libraries available for the build scripts to use. These are available from one of these two URLs, depending on whether you are on a 32-bit or 64-bit system, or you can click here for instructions on building them from source.
- https://www.panda3d.org/download/panda3d-1.10.14/panda3d-1.10.14-tools-win64.zip
- https://www.panda3d.org/download/panda3d-1.10.14/panda3d-1.10.14-tools-win32.zip
After acquiring these dependencies, you can build Panda3D from the command
prompt using the following command. Change the --msvc-version option based
on your version of Visual C++; 2022 is 14.3, 2019 is 14.2, 2017 is 14.1, and
2015 is 14. Remove the --windows-sdk=10 option if you need to support
Windows Vista, which requires the Windows 8.1 SDK.
makepanda\makepanda.bat --everything --installer --msvc-version=14.3 --windows-sdk=10 --no-eigen --threads=2When the build succeeds, it will produce an .exe file that you can use to install Panda3D on your system.
Note: you may choose to remove --no-eigen and build with Eigen support in
order to improve runtime performance. However, this will cause the build to
take hours to complete, as Eigen is a heavily template-based library, and the
MSVC compiler does not perform well under those circumstances.
Building Panda3D on Linux is easy. All you need is to invoke the makepanda script using the version of Python that you want Panda3D to be built against.
Run makepanda.py with the --help option to see which options are available. Usually, you will want to specify the --everything option (which builds with support for all features for which it detects the prerequisite dependencies) and the --installer option (which produces an installable .deb or .rpm file for you to install, depending on your distribution).
The following command illustrates how to build Panda3D with some common options:
python3 makepanda/makepanda.py --everything --installer --no-egl --no-gles --no-gles2 --no-opencvYou will probably see some warnings saying that it's unable to find several dependency packages. You should determine which ones you want to include in your build and install the respective development packages. You may visit this manual page for an overview of the various dependencies.
If you are on Ubuntu, this command should cover the most frequently used third-party packages:
sudo apt-get install build-essential pkg-config fakeroot python3-dev libpng-dev libjpeg-dev libtiff-dev zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libx11-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libxrandr-dev libxxf86dga-dev libxcursor-dev bison flex libfreetype6-dev libvorbis-dev libeigen3-dev libopenal-dev libode-dev libbullet-dev nvidia-cg-toolkit libgtk-3-dev libassimp-dev libopenexr-devOnce Panda3D has built, you can either install the .deb or .rpm package that is produced, depending on which Linux distribution you are using. For example, to install the package on Debian or Ubuntu, use this:
sudo dpkg -i panda3d*.debIf you are not using a Linux distribution that supports .deb or .rpm packages, you
may have to use the installpanda.py script instead, which will directly copy the
files into the appropriate locations on your computer. You may have to run the
ldconfig tool in order to update your library cache after installing Panda3D.
Alternatively, you can add the --wheel option, which will produce a .whl
file that can be installed into a Python installation using pip.
On macOS, you will need to download a set of precompiled thirdparty packages in order to compile Panda3D, which can be acquired from here.
After placing the thirdparty directory inside the panda3d source directory, you may build Panda3D using a command like the following:
python makepanda/makepanda.py --everything --installerYou may target a specific minimum macOS version using the --osxtarget flag followed by the release number, eg. 10.9 or 10.14.
If the build was successful, makepanda will have generated a .dmg file in the source directory containing the installer. Simply open it and run the package file in order to install the SDK onto your system.
If you would like to support the project financially, visit our campaign on OpenCollective. Your contributions help us accelerate the development of Panda3D.
For the list of backers, see the BACKERS.md file or visit the Sponsors page on our web site. Thank you to everyone who has donated!
