Renderer Objects

Overview

This chapter describes renderer objects (or renderers) and the functions you can use to manipulate them. You use renderers to specify the various aspects of the kind of image you want to create. A single renderer is associated with a view, along with a list of lights, a camera, and other settings that affect the drawing of a model. QuickDraw 3D supplies several kinds of renderers, but you can easily add other kinds of renderers to support alternate drawing algorithms.

To use this chapter, you should already be familiar with the QuickDraw 3D class hierarchy, described in the chapter "QuickDraw 3D Objects" earlier in this book. For information about associating a renderer with a view, see the chapter "View Objects."

This chapter begins by describing renderer objects and their features. Then it shows how to create and manipulate renderers. The section "Renderer Objects Reference" provides a complete description of the routines you can use to create and manipulate renderer objects. The section "Renderer Methods" discusses methods that a custom renderer can or must support. The section "Draw Region Interface" describes the draw region interface, which lets custom renderers access the QuickDraw 3D frame buffer and communicate information about the configuration and state of the drawing context.