> If YOU were teaching computer graphic animation at a college level

For an introductory course, you still want the students to learn the 'how it's made' while not being bogged down by the details of what underlying APIs they should be using. Contrary to some peers above, I would recommend not to focus on any one particular engine and instead teach them to build their own as they progress using a common framework throughout the class. I suggest you use Allegro (http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro), a C++ gaming framework that contains most of the math and engine components interfaces already built in. It's solid, complete, cross-platform and students can dig deeper to satiate their curiosity if they want. Besides, I've seen it in use at a few professional studios so it's not like it's an indie-only thingie.

But hey, that would be ME teaching the computer graphics class...

-cb

Thanks to all for the great feedback!

For a course you want to keep the costs down. There are tons of engines, but for learners you want to it to be simple to understand and use.

There is actually an engine designed specifically for this purpose. It's been kept simple for learners and is aimed towards academic use. It's called Simple Academic Game Engine.

http://larc.csci.unt.edu/sage/

Straight DirectX might not be such a bad way to go either, a lot of Engines mirror the design somehow.

I'd be resistant to recommend any commerical engine for academic use as they are generally more complicated than they need to be for academia. I also feel Ogre, Nebula Device and Crystal Space are a little too complicated.

It depends also on what language(s) you're expecting your class to know.

Trust me the easiest engine to learn and use would be Blitz3D. It's based on BASIC an extremely simple language. Try this out and tell me what you see.

Unity is a great engine. It keeps it at a high-level, its easy to incorporate with many modeling applications and is highly expressive. It uses &#106avascript, C#, or Boo with Mono (.NET) for scripting.<br><br>http://unity3d.com