Free 3D Engines, 2D Engines, Graphics Libraries / Source Code, Image Drawing

PASJPEG

Compress and decompress JPEG files with this library, which is actually a port of the Independent JPEG Group's C sources into Pascal/Delphi. It was written for Turbo Pascal 7.0 and Delphi 2.0 but should work with other Pascal compilers which are compatible with these two.

MESA

A 3D graphics library with an API similar to OpenGL. It implements the OpenGL 1.2 API specification (as of version 3.0), and works on most Unix systems with X11. Drivers are available for Amiga, Windows, Macintosh, MSDOS, NeXT, BeOS, etc. 3D hardware supported include 3dfx Voodoo1, Voodoo2, Voodoo Rush, Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo3, nVidia, Amiga Warp3D, Matrox G200/G400, nVidia RIVA, ATI Rage Pro.

Gizmo3D

This C++ 3D engine is free for non-commercial use. It is available for Win32, Linux and IRIX. It provides for scene management and presentation, 3D graphical nodes, multipass rendering and effects, selection and collision detection, animation control, etc.

LibXMI

You can use this C library for rasterizing 2-D vector graphics primitives such as wide polygonal lines, circular and elliptical arcs and filled polygons. It does not interface with the screen directly, rather, it draws into a user-supplied matrix of pixels. Platforms supported include Linux, FreeBSD and Unix systems. However, the author notes that it should be possible to compile it and install it on any system with a C compiler.

Scitech MGL

SciTech, makers of the well-known Display Doctor, has released its Scitech MGL library under an open source public license. This full-blown graphics library has loads of features to allow you to write 2D/3D graphics programs (such as games, etc). It has a 3D API that can scale from software-only to full 3D hardware geometry acceleration. You use the OpenGL API to write your program, for the Windows and/or MSDOS environment, thus allowing you to maintain one set of sources for programs on these platforms. The library comes with complete source code, and a host of useful supplemental libraries (also with source code). There are too many features to list here. Check out the website yourself. The website boasts that this library was used in the development of games like WinQuake and Hexen II.

ImageMagick

ImageMagick is a well known package of libraries and tools for reading, writing and manipulating many image formats, including GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, Photo CD, etc. You can create the image, rotate it, resize it, add special effects, convert between formats, and so on. The library is in C, but there are C++, Perl, Java and Python interfaces as well. The object-oriented C++ interface provides integrated support for STL. Supported platforms include Linux, Windows NT/95, Macintosh, VMS, OS2 and "virtually any Unix".

LibWMF

LibWMF is a library that is able to parse Win16 WMF files and converts them to GIF or fig file formats, or X draw commands for use in an X Windows program. The library is released under the LGPL and should work on Linux.

Paintlib

Paintlib is a C++ class library that allows you to easily decode an image and manipulate it. It supports, with the help of publicly available libraries, the following formats: JPEG, TGA, TIFF, JPEG/JFIF, Windows BMP, Mac PICT, and TIFF previews in EPS files. It can be used on Win32, MSDOS, Linux, etc. There is apparently an ActiveX control as well.

PNG Source Code, Library and Utilities

The Portable Network Graphics format is a lossless compression image format. The site features lots of information about PNG and includes source code and libraries for you to implement PNG in your own program. There are even Java and JavaScript versions, converters, and a whole lot of other utilities and source code.

JPEGFile

A Win32 class library that allows you to read JPEG files into a RGB buffer and saves the buffer as a RGB file or a grey scale JPEG file.

Open Scene Graph

Open Scene Graph (OSG) is a high level 3D graphics toolkit that you can use in development of games, visual simulation, virtual reality, scientific visualizations and modelling. It is an object oriented framework written in standard C++, uses OpenGL, and supports Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, IRIX and Solaris. OSG is released under a "relaxed version" of the GNU LGPL, allowing its use in both open and closed source projects (see the site for details).

g2 2D Graphics Library

This open source 2D graphics library is written in C and has a C, Fortran and Perl interface. It exposes functions that you can use to generate graphics for Postscript, X11, PNG, and Win32. The library has been tested on Linux, AIX, Digital Unix, SunOS, IRIX, VMS and Windows NT/2000.

GD Library

This is a well-known library for the creation of PNG and JPEG images. It is written in ANSI C, but you can also call the library from Perl, Tcl, Pascal, Haskell, REXX and possibly other languages. It has facilities for you to draw lines and arcs, write text, colour the images, cut and paste images, do flood fills, etc.

Expression 3D Toolkit

Expression is a C++/STL toolkit that supports interactive 3D graphics using OpenGL as well as non-interactive sphere tracing. It runs on Win32 and Linux, supports JPEG and 3DS filters, is MT-safe (thread-safe) (supports both POSIX and Win32 multithreading), handles 3D and homogenous coordinates, 3x3 and 4x4 matrices, quaternion, colour range maps, axis aligned bounding boxes, fogs, procedural textures, fullscreen and windowed modes, polygonal models (tri-mesh), primitive sky, particle systems, etc.

Bolt3D Engine

Bolt3D is a real-time 3D engine for Win32 systems. It supports real-time gouraud, phong, texture-mapping, particle systems (for stuff like smoke and bubbles), bilinear-filtering, surface mapping, artificial spotlights, fog effects, 3D object creation (spheres, cones, sweeps, cubes, hardware acceleration, etc. You can interface the code from Visual C++, Delphi and Visual Basic. The engine is free.

libAfterImage

libAfterImage is an image manipulation library for X Windows that supports loading, storing blending, rendering and manipulation of images. Image formats like XCF, XPM, PPM/PNM, BMP, ICO, JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF (full range) can be imported into the library, which also allows you to use TrueType fonts. The library may be used without X Windows, and handles scaling, tinting, flipping, tiling, textuarized, semi-transparent 3D text rendering, etc.

Libart

This 2D graphics library supports numerous data structures (vector paths, Bezier paths, RGB and RGBA images, sorted vector paths, MicroTile arrays, Affine transformations) and algorithms (converting Bezier paths into vector paths, antialiased rendering of SVPs, alpha-compositing, etc).

GraphLib

This C++ class library that can be used to represent graphs. It comes with a few graph algorithms and is extensible. It runs on Windows 9x and Linux.

Interactive Visualisation Framework

Ivf++ is a C++ visualisation framework for 3D rendering that encapsulates OpenGL and GLUT functionality. Its extensible foundation classes can be used either standalone or in conjunction with other GUI libraries such as FLTK, MFC and GTK+. It comes with tutorials and a user's guide. It runs on Windows and X11 (Unix systems) and apparently has been tested on Windows NT/2000, Linux and IRIX.