Acron Manual

Welcome to the Acron documentation! Acron is an open-source, free-to-use 3D engine made for the development of realtime 3D games, visualizations, simulations, experiments — you name it! It consists of a library of subroutines that can be used with either the Python or C++ programming language, as well as a few tools to assist with development and debugging.

There are two versions of the manual: one for Python users and one for C++ users. Use the link in the sidebar to switch between the versions. You are currently viewing the manual for C++ users.

The manual is organized by what you are trying to do right now: learning the engine, getting a specific job done, looking something up, or understanding how a part of the engine works. Pick the heading that matches, or use the sidebar to browse every section directly.

Tutorials — start here

Lessons that take a beginner from nothing to a running program. Read these in order; they assume no prior knowledge of the engine and each one builds on the last. The Introduction walks through installing Acron and ends with a “Hello World” tutorial that creates a very small Acron program, to give you a sense of what using the engine looks like.

How-to guides — get a job done

Directions for a reader who already knows the basics and has arrived with a specific task in mind. Each section answers “how do I …?” for one stage of production.

Getting artistic content — models, textures, animation — out of the program it was made in and into Acron:

Finding out why a program misbehaves, using the engine’s inspection and diagnostic tooling:

Finding and fixing performance problems, so a game runs on as broad a range of hardware as possible:

Compiling a finished application into an executable and packaging it up to ship:

Reference — look something up

Descriptions of the machinery, for a reader who knows what they are looking for and needs the details to be accurate and complete.

A complete listing of every class and function in the Acron API. It is worth reading side-by-side with the rest of the manual: the guides show a feature in use, the reference gives its exact signature and semantics.

The engine’s vocabulary, for when a page uses a term in a sense particular to Acron:

Explanation — understand how it works

Discussion of the concepts that underpin the library, for a reader who wants to know why the engine is shaped the way it is rather than which call to make.

This section still carries a good deal of task-shaped material that belongs under the how-to guides above, and is littered with example code and links to the API reference. Expect its pages to move as the manual is reorganized.

Elsewhere

Books, sample programs, user-contributed tutorials, and the other resources that sit outside this manual:

If you are struggling with understanding or using Acron, feel free to ask the community! There is a passionate community around Acron that is here to help. You can post a question on the discussion forum, visit our Discord server or visit the #acron channel on the Libera.Chat IRC server.