If I have a scene made in Blender, is there some way to make an .EXE out of it, so that the application will launch, and people can move around in the scene with the cursor keys or whatever…? Is this possible in Blender itself, or, if not, can I use one of the open source game engines to do this…?
Thanks.
If you’re using 2.79 you can use the built in game engine. Although I believe it won’t generate an .exe for you.
But fell free to have a look at Godot. It’s known to work well with Blender.
For making an .exe try Armory3d, BGE, or UPBGE, or as said Godot.
Blender itself has Fly Mode (WASD and mouselook) built in with optional gravity for a walking effect, try Shift F or Shift ~ in the viewport and G to toggle gravity.
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I think you can still do this for free with Unreal Engine as well. There at least used to be no license fees for things like archvis demos that weren’t sold as games etc. I think they now have a way you can pay money for advanced features in this area, but the basic ability to build a walkthrough demo application are probably still free.
Thank you I will try armory as it’s more advanced with pbr material
Armory3D™ uses the Haxe programming language, which is cross-platform. It can, among other things, produce a Windows executable.
It does this, in this case, by generating C++ code that is then compiled using Windows’ native compiler. (Thus, Haxe is what is known as a “transpiler.” A “source-to-source compiler.”)
But it also has other so-called “targets” which can run on Windows. (It can even produce Flash – better than Adobe does – and HTML5/JavaScript.)
Haxe is quite a remarkable and very powerful open source language that you need to become familiar with. It does exactly what it says it does, and it does it very well. (I haven’t written my own JavaScript in many years now, and, once you get to know this tool, you won’t either.)
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Well, getting an executable out of your Blender scene was definetely possible in pre 2.8 era with the now exluded game engine. If you are using 2.79 or earlier, you would have to invest some time in getting the First Person Motion and physics colliders set up. Here is a thread that might help:
For few months in a row i had current Blender version and i am pretty sure it had an option for making .exe and i even remember trying it out with a single project but truth is it is gone. What the hell is going on?
to make a .exe you need to activate the addon in user preferences. once done then file-export as exectable/standalone.
at addons, left collumn game engine- then activate save as runtime
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I almost started to cry when i noticed that the option for it was gone.
wel in 2.8 it’s gone for sure (no game engine) but all older version still has it, you just need to activate it before you can see/use it. but i agree, they removed it for some reason into an inactive state, 2.6 etc had it ready to go.
I may get 2.8 when they will remove that beta written by it that means that it is in some development stage i guess. So as i understand in 2.8 it will be in there, just inactive under addons tab?
If so i guess that could be something to do with saving gpu resource.
Few weeks ago it popped into my mind that for example if You go with ocean planes or some other movements of rig or whatever in map like trees or even creeps to perform idle animations would be an option to leave inactive and maybe trigger their actions by value of 1 on the zone and do other things like spawn more if value of characters in zone is 2 when the main character/s enter the zone so things get into view and only then get activated for sake of saving gpu resource of processes so that lags and other things would mess up less in some cases.
Keep in mind, .exe executable is for game engine, 2.8 does NOT have a game engine, so no it won’t be there. (but not sure either due to i left bge and using upbge now)
Sounds like 2.8 is going to be just for renders then. Bge = Blender game engine.
What did You mean by upbge?
bge is blender game engine indeed. upbge is Uchronia Project Blender Game Engine, it’s a fork of BGE, this group made a lot of bug fixes and option into UPBGE, so at this point UPBGE is better then BGE(2.79) itself.
it’s an interactive engine now, with the main goal renders indeed. at some point there will be a new game engine in BGE, but this can take a few years.
I haven’t read anywhere much about UPBGE and how better it is than BGE yet. So for those who are planning to make any apps from their projects will have to stick with 2.79 all tough if UPBGE is better what is the point of it being better if 2.8 don’t have .exe export at all?! 
I understand they sort of try to seperate things as some people dont do games and as the whole Blender is seperated in 3 things as Blender Render, Blender Game and Blender Cycles and i believe that project can get a bit heavy if they do loads of crazy stuff in renders its all i guess to make things less sluggish for those who don’t bge but makes movies and smoke a alot.
people don’t understand the GE’s power
Wow, that’s kinda cool. But i think that is a bit too much to include sculpting of world maps in game for players unless if it’s for game developer/s mod to work on continuation of games next expansion.
I am guessing that sculpting is achieved by making a grid mesh that has actions for added or some sort of servo controls on armature and actuator to raise or lower the armature sticked to something like an Attractor with a ball upon collision that was posted here by user with a name Monster.
Download unreal engine 4, (free) export blender scenes in FBX format. Create 1st person template game…import scene into UE4…adjust lighting to your liking and anything else you might want. Pack project.
You will need to watch a good number of tutorials, but probably something you could learn to do in about a week.