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 Python 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.