List_of_rendering_APIs Knowpia

Rendering APIs typically provide just enough functionality to abstract a graphics accelerator, focussing on rendering primitives, state management, command lists/command buffers; and as such differ from fully fledged 3D graphics libraries, 3D engines (which handle scene graphs, lights, animation, materials etc.), and GUI frameworks; Some provide fallback software rasterisers, which were important for compatibility and adoption before graphics accelerators became widespread.

Some have been extended to include support for compute shaders.

Low level rendering APIs typically leave more responsibility with the user for resource memory management, and require more verbose control, but have significantly lower CPU overhead,^[1] and allow greater utilisation of multicore processors.

2D rendering APIs edit

OpenVG
Direct2D
Quartz 2D
Anti-Grain Geometry (AGG)
Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL)
Simple and Fast Multimedia Library (SFML)
X11
Cairo
Skia
Qt GUI primitive rendering abstractions, on which Qt widgets are built
Blend2D
HTML5 Canvas element

Offline rendering edit

RenderMan aimed at offline rendering for CG films.

Software rasterising edit

As of 2016, these are generally considered obsolete, but were still important during the transition to hardware acceleration:

BRender by argonaut software

3D rendering APIs edit

These libraries are designed explicitly to abstract 3D graphics hardware for CAD and video games, with possible software fallbacks.

Cross platform, high level edit

OpenGL and the OpenGL Shading Language
OpenGL ES 3D API for embedded devices
OpenGL SC a version of openGL for safety critical systems.
RenderWare (combined game engine and cross platform rendering API. Became popular since the PlayStation 2 had no rendering API, initially relying on bare metal programming.)