Cocos Creator User Manual 3.8

Welcome to use Cocos Creator 3.8！

Cocos Creator is both an efficient, lightweight, free and open source cross-platform 2D & 3D graphics engine and a real-time interactive 2D & 3D digital content creation platform. With many advantages such as High Performance, Low Power Consumption, Streaming Loading and Cross-Platform Publishing, you can use it to create projects in fields such as Games, Cars, XR, MetaVerse etc.

This manual contains detailed instructions, workflows for different positions and tutorials for beginners. It helps you learn how to use the Cocos Creator and its associated services.

You can read it from begin to end, or just use it as a reference.

If you are the first time to use Cocos Creator, take a look at the Getting Started, and see the Examples & Tutorials.

If you’re already familiar with other engines like Unity, you can check out the Unity Developer’s Quick Guide to Cocos Creator to get started with Cocos Creator.

v3.8 New Features

• New features such as Procedural Animation, High Precision Text, New Custom Render Pipeline, Character Controller, etc. have been added in this version.
• For a full list of updates go to Release Notes
• For projects using older versions of Cocos Creator, please refer to Upgrade Guide

User Manual sections

• Cocos Creator Basic Usage
• Scene Creation
• Assets System
• Scripting Guide and Event System
• Cross-Platform Publishing
• Graphics Rendering
• 2D Rendering
• UI System
• Animation System
• Audio System
• Physics System
• Particle System
• Tween System
• Terrain System
• Asset Manager
• Localization
• Editor Extension
• Advanced Topics

More

• Cocos Forum：ask questions, find anwsers and communicate with other developers
• Examples & Tutorials：learning resources of Cocos Creator
• Cocos Store：access to get more art assets, learning demos and source codes

Product Line Overview

Over the years, Cocos (Xiamen Yaji Software) has been continuously developing and has released several product lines closely related to Cocos Creator. To avoid confusion, here is a brief introduction to these products:

• Cocos Creator 3.x: Released in early 2021, it is the latest version of Cocos Creator, and has been validated through numerous commercial projects. 3.x completely abandons the Cocos2d-x base, adopting a brand new high-performance cross-platform 3D core. This marks the official development of Cocos Creator into a comprehensive pan-mobile 3D game engine. Since the 3.x base has been completely rewritten, Cocos Creator is no longer considered a direct extension and upgrade of Cocos2d-x.
• Cocos Creator 2.x: Released in 2018, updates ceased in 2023. All capabilities have been inherited by Cocos Creator 3.x, so it is recommended that new projects use the latest Cocos Creator 3.x.
• Cocos Creator 3D: Initiated in 2017, it underwent small-scale testing in China for over a year as Cocos Creator 3D at the end of 2019, and later officially merged into Cocos Creator 3.0. Since it has been replaced by Cocos Creator 3.x and is no longer updated separately, Cocos Creator 3D usually refers to Cocos Creator’s own 3D capabilities rather than this specific version.
• Cocos2d-x: Released in 2010, it ceased updates in 2019. This is the most active branch of the Cocos2d community, and the underlying runtime initially adopted by Cocos Creator 2.x was the upgraded Cocos2d-x.
• Cocos: When Cocos appears as the engine name alone, it usually represents Cocos Creator 3.x, rather than Cocos2d-x.

After years of rapid development, there are significant differences in usage between Cocos Creator 3.x and Cocos Creator 2.x, and their APIs are not fully compatible. Therefore, when developers consult documentation, APIs, and tutorials, please pay attention to distinguish whether the target version is 2.x or 3.x to avoid errors due to version inconsistency.