Exploring the OpenGL Graphics Pipeline
In software, an engine is an application that takes all the hard work out of creating an application by providing an application programming interface (API) specific to the task. Unity3D, for example, is a game engine. It’s a tool for creating games and empowers the programmer by removing the need to write low-level code.
An engine consists of several modules dedicated to tasks, as shown in Figure 4.1:
Figure 4.1: Typical components of a game engine
A mainstream graphics application needs to possess all the fundamental abilities to display and move graphics elements (such as the ones we examined in Chapter 2, Let’s Start Drawing) in either 2D or 3D, with most 3D engines able to display 2D simply by removing the z axis. These elements work together to take a 2D or 3D model through the graphics pipeline where it is transformed from a set of vertices into an image that appears on the screen. The graphics...
