Render Unto Thee: QuickDraw 3D -- Apple has been quietly promoting a set of 3D modeling and rendering libraries, code-named Escher, amongst developers for at least the last few months. But the cat finally seems to be out of the bag: the product will be called QuickDraw 3D and be available as a shared library only for the Power Macintosh. Anticipated to be of great benefit to developers of games and consumer-oriented titles as well as high-end applications, QuickDraw 3D makes three-dimensional information an integrated Macintosh data type, doing much the same thing for models and 3D information that QuickTime did for video and images. Using QuickDraw 3D, renderings could be dropped into a "two-dimensional" application - such as a text editor or layout program - and still retain editable three-dimensional data. QuickDraw 3D supports OpenGL (part of SGI's graphics technology) which should make development and integration with high-end rendering programs comparatively straightforward. Apple anticipates QuickDraw 3D to be available in mid-1995 (to coincide with the first PCI Power Macs), with a Windows version to follow in early 1996. [GD]

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