Although this book will repeatedly tell you how awesome the jMonkeyEngine SDK is, you are not forced to use it for coding. The jMonkeyEngine library is open source software: If you download the latest binary bundle from http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/nightly/, you can manually add the JAR files from the lib directory to your CLASSPATH, just like any other Java library. You can link these libraries in your favorite Java IDE, or do your Java development in a text editor on the command line if that's how you roll.

For now, let's continue using the SDK because it will get you started more swiftly. This book strives to keep code samples IDE-independent. If a shortcut or workflow only applies to the jMonkeyEngine SDK, it will be clearly pointed out as such.

Nonetheless you should give the jMonkeyEngine SDK a try. It contains many plugins that you will not find in generic IDEs: an asset pack manager and file converters for 3D models, a scene viewer and scene composer, a terrain editor, a procedural texture generator, a code snippet palette, and much more. Try it! If you are not convinced by the end of this book, you will find setup instructions for other IDEs in the appendix. Deal?