irrlicht is very friendly, about a year and a half ago i was playing around with it when i was trying to get a little further aquainted with c++ (I only had a very basic understanding of it, and up until then, i still hadnt even figured out the point of pointers) but I was still able to build levels, and make a poor 1st person camera. It works pretty well, although the biggest issues are speed oriented, it is quite slow and has no real scene management. still a very good starting block for a custom game engine.