Magnum is 2D/3D graphics engine written in C++11 and modern OpenGL.

DESIGN GOALS

• 2D is not an ugly stepchild Many engines out there are either purely 2D or 3D and if you want to do your next project in 2D only, you have to either relearn another engine from scratch or emulate it in 3D, leaving many things overly complicated. Magnum treats 2D equivalently to 3D so you can reuse what you already learned for 3D and even combine 2D and 3D in one project.

• Forward compatibility If newer technology makes things faster, simpler or more intuitive, it is the way to go. If you then really need to, you can selectively backport some features and it will be easier than maintaining full backward compatibility by default. Magnum by default relies on decent C++11 support and modern OpenGL features, but compatibility functions for older hardware and compatibility branch for older compilers are available if you need them.

• Intuitive, but not restrictive API Scripting languages are often preferred to C/C++ because they tend to do more with less -- less complicated APIs, nicer syntax and less boilerplate code. Magnum is designed with scripting language intuitivity in mind, but also with speed and static checks that native code and strong typing offers. Usually the most common way is the most simple, but if you need full control, you can have it.

• Extensible and replaceable components If you want to use different mathematical library for specific purposes, that new windowing toolkit, your own file formats or another physics library, you can. Conversion of data between different libraries can be done on top of pre-made skeleton classes, support for file formats is done using plugins and platform support is done by writing simple wrapper class.

SUPPORTED PLATFORMS

• OpenGL 2.1 through 4.3, core profile functionality and modern extensions
• OpenGL ES 2.0, 3.0 and extensions to match desktop OpenGL functionality
• Linux and embedded Linux (natively using GLX/EGL and Xlib or through GLUT or SDL2 toolkit)
• Windows (through GLUT or SDL2 toolkit)
• Google Chrome (through Native Client, both newlib and glibc toolchains are supported)

FEATURES

• Actively maintained Doxygen documentation with tutorials and examples. Snapshot is available at http://mosra.cz/blog/magnum-doc/.
• Vector and matrix library with implementation of complex numbers, quaternions and their dual counterparts for representing transformations.
• Classes wrapping OpenGL and simplifying its usage with direct state access and automatic fallback for unavailable features.
• Extensible scene graph which can be modified for each specific usage.
• Plugin-based data exchange framework, tools for manipulating meshes, textures and images.
• Pre-made shaders, primitives and other tools for easy prototyping and debugging.

INSTALLATION

You can either use packaging scripts, which are stored in package/ subdirectory, or compile and install everything manually. Note that Doxygen documentation (see above or build your own using instructions below) contains more comprehensive guide for building, packaging and crosscompiling.

Minimal dependencies

• C++ compiler with good C++11 support. Currently there are two compilers which are tested to support everything needed: GCC >= 4.6 and Clang

  = 3.1.

• CMake >= 2.8.8 (needed for OBJECT library target)
• GLEW - OpenGL extension wrangler (only if targeting desktop OpenGL)
• Corrade - Plugin management and utility library. You can get it at https://github.com/mosra/corrade.

Compilation, installation

The library (for example with support for GLUT applications) can be built and installed using these four commands:

mkdir -p build && cd build
cmake .. \
    -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr \
    -DWITH_GLUTAPPLICATION=ON
make
make install

See Doxygen documentation for more information about enabling or disabling additional features and targeting different platforms such as OpenGL ES.

Building and running unit tests

If you want to build also unit tests (which are not built by default), pass -DBUILD_TESTS=ON to CMake. Unit tests use Corrade's TestSuite framework and can be run using

ctest --output-on-failure

in build directory. Everything should pass ;-)

Building documentation

The documentation is written in Doxygen (version 1.8 with Markdown support is used, but older versions should do good job too) and additionally uses Graphviz for class diagrams and TeX for math formulas. The documentation can be build by running:

doxygen

in root directory (i.e. where Doxyfile is). Resulting HTML documentation will be in build/doc/ directory. You might need to create build/ directory if it doesn't exist yet.

PLUGINS AND EXAMPLES

Various importer plugins for image and 3D model formats are maintained in separate repository, which can be found at https://github.com/mosra/magnum-plugins.

There are also examples of engine usage, varying from simple Hello World-like example to more advanced applications, such as viewer for complex 3D models. Example repository is at https://github.com/mosra/magnum-examples.

CONTACT

Want to learn more about the library? Found a bug or want to tell me an awesome idea? Feel free to visit my website or contact me at:

• Website - http://mosra.cz/blog/
• GitHub - https://github.com/mosra/magnum
• E-mail - mosra@centrum.cz
• Jabber - mosra@jabbim.cz

LICENSE

Magnum is licensed under MIT/Expat license, see COPYING file for details.