Chimera 3D engine


Chimera 3D is a portable OpenGL engine developed to run on Windows, macOS and iOS. Over the years Chimera has evolved a lot to adapt to new demands (for example by supporting the 3D-> 3D stereo switch with a simple button). A public version is available free for everyone, the package for OS X and Windows includes the main executable and lots of example scenes

Download Chimera macOS (4.5MB 10.7+)
Download Chimera Windows (6.5MB Windows 7/8/10/11)
Also, keep an eye on Chimera Script Reference

Lately I declared Chimera “deprecated” although it is still used in many software and still supported, in favor of the new “C3” version which is completely shader-based (and compliant ES3.0).


The main features are:

  • it is based on textual scripts (compiled using bison and lexx);
  • supports 3DS, OBjs and all the most common graphic formats (jpg, png, tif, gif etc);
  • supports 3D physics via Bullet and 2D via Box2D;
  • supports vertex and fragment shaders;
  • implements a vast set of fxs such as: standard bumpmaps, lightmaps, normal mapping, specular mapping, glow, lightbloom, env-mapping, blur, lensflares, alpha sorts etc;
  • internal engine for particle systems; internal lightmap generator, based on Radiosity; supports both stencil and shadowmap shadows;
  • CSG;
  • vast set of effects on textures such as scroll, live video on textures etc;
  • contains a manager to manage water and fluids; skybox and cubemaps;
  • manage keyframers for movement (use a bezier path interpolator);
  • native “on the fly” swap from 3D to 3D stereo (SBS) and vice versa;
  • updated to iOS 10+, macOS (XCode11 +) and Windows 10 (VisualStudio 2022);
 
 
 
 
 
lightbloom
sample toon shader
sample lightmapping
bumpmapping, envmapping & alpha sort in a single pass
normal and specular maps
shadows
CSG
Combined Radiosity with CubeMapping
lens flares
particle systems
… and a lot more!!