SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives Learn more →
Top 23 C++ 3D Projects
-
Project mention: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2025) | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-02-23
I'm a long-time FreeCAD user, and one of my annoyances is that long-running operations lock up the entire UI and can't be aborted.
So for my first contribution to FreeCAD I'm working on fixing this.
The underlying CAD operations are done by "OpenCascade", and at first I thought OpenCascade had no support for aborting operations part of the way through. So my first implementation was to move the operation into a child process and give the user a dialog box that would allow terminating the child process.
But it actually turns out OpenCascade does support aborting the operations! So now I'm working on doing it the OpenCascade way.
My PR is here: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/19796
-
InfluxDB
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
-
-
3d-game-shaders-for-beginners
🎮 A step-by-step guide to implementing SSAO, depth of field, lighting, normal mapping, and more for your 3D game.
-
-
-
cocos-engine
Cocos simplifies game creation and distribution with Cocos Creator, a free, open-source, cross-platform game engine. Empowering millions of developers to create high-performance, engaging 2D/3D games and instant web entertainment.
-
Project mention: Simple programming language with offline usable browser IDE | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-05-29
I suppose I should blog about this at: https://designinto3d.com/
but I've written a fair number of posts on it at:
https://forum.makerforums.info/search?q=gcodepreview
and it has come up a few times at:
https://community.carbide3d.com/search?q=gcodepreview
and on the OpenSCAD mailing list --- that latter might need to be extended back in time to encompass: https://github.com/openscad/openscad/issues/2017
Glad to answer any questions you might have!
-
Stream
Stream - Scalable APIs for Chat, Feeds, Moderation, & Video. Stream helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performant and flexible Chat, Feeds, Moderation, and Video APIs and SDKs powered by a global edge network and enterprise-grade infrastructure.
-
Project mention: Ask HN: How to produce a 3D scan of a car from a mobile phone? | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-01-27
-
-
-
Project mention: We just added bounties on Windows and macOS issues | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-06-29
-
Note that there's a great C99/C++ single header library, tinyobjloader, that provides robust (in my experience) and feature-full OBJ loading, including triangulation of n-gons and full material parsing.
https://github.com/tinyobjloader/tinyobjloader
It's fairly mature and handles many of the parsing footguns you'll inevitably run into trying to write your own OBJ parser.
-
dust3d
Dust3D is a cross-platform 3D modeling software that makes it easy to create low poly 3D models for video games, 3D printing, and more.
-
-
-
Project mention: Show HN: Open-Source Software for Designing 3D-Printable Luneburg Lenses for RF | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-09-02
Luneforge is built on top of Pymesh docker image (a fast C++ Python wrapped Geometry Processing Library)
https://github.com/PyMesh/PyMesh
It requires docker cause its the best way to have all the required dependancies for Pymesh
-
-
OCCT
Open CASCADE Technology (OCCT) is an open-source software development platform for 3D CAD, CAM, CAE.
Project mention: OpenSCAD: The Programmer's Solid 3D CAD Modeller | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-09-14OpenSCAD has been great for simple projects. It’s very easy to get productive with if you know basic programming concepts. However, I’ve run into frustrating limitations on more complex projects. The core geometry engine is skittish.
I still use OpenSCAD, but I’m diving into the OCCT ecosystem. It has a steeper learning curve, but seems to be significantly more robust.
https://dev.opencascade.org/
-
You could use ODM to generate a point cloud and then use OpenSplat on it - both are open source and free software: https://github.com/OpenDroneMap/ODM / https://github.com/pierotofy/OpenSplat
-
-
SoftGLRender
Tiny C++ Software Renderer / Rasterizer, and implements OpenGL and Vulkan renderers for comparison
-
-
vive-diy-position-sensor
Code & schematics for position tracking sensor using HTC Vive's Lighthouse system and a Teensy board.
-
SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
C++ 3D discussion
C++ 3D related posts
-
Playing with Code
-
3D Game Shaders for Beginners
-
PyVista
-
C++ GLTF to Metal backend
-
OpenSCAD: The Programmer's Solid 3D CAD Modeller
-
LÖVR – An open source framework for rapidly building immersive 3D experiences
-
Stable Fast 3D: Rapid 3D Asset Generation from Single Images
-
A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 15 Jul 2025
Index
What are some of the best open-source 3D projects in C++? This list will help you:
# | Project | Stars |
---|---|---|
1 | FreeCAD | 25,290 |
2 | tinyrenderer | 22,190 |
3 | 3d-game-shaders-for-beginners | 18,859 |
4 | blender | 15,631 |
5 | Open3D | 12,525 |
6 | cocos-engine | 8,815 |
7 | openscad | 8,014 |
8 | meshlab | 5,225 |
9 | tinyraytracer | 5,202 |
10 | magnum | 4,999 |
11 | F3D | 3,614 |
12 | tinyobjloader | 3,553 |
13 | dust3d | 3,084 |
14 | UEViewer | 2,667 |
15 | tinykaboom | 2,379 |
16 | PyMesh | 1,987 |
17 | pioneer | 1,746 |
18 | OCCT | 1,661 |
19 | OpenSplat | 1,370 |
20 | zeno | 1,362 |
21 | SoftGLRender | 1,087 |
22 | TerraForge3D | 1,067 |
23 | vive-diy-position-sensor | 946 |