Quesa

If you're looking for a 3D graphics library with a consistent and object-orientated API, then Quesa may be just what you need. This library offers binary and source level compatibility with Apple's QuickDraw 3D API, so if you're familiar with that, you'll already be up to speed. And if you're not, don't worry, as Quesa has been developed without access to Apple's QD3D implementation.

One neat feature of Quesa is its support for both retained and immediate mode rendering. There's also an extensible file format, plug-in renderers, a wide range of high level geometries, hierarchical models, and more. Essentially, Quesa acts as a scene-graph while using OpenGL for rendering. However, in principle, it could be adapted to use a different low-level rendering engine such as Direct 3D.

And if you're wondering how to pronounce Quesa, it's kes-ah. Think Quesadilla, without the dia.

So, what's new in this release? There's updated support for Intel Mac, and 64-bit cleanness on Linux. Quesa now also offers better writing and reading of view hints, and there's a new Cartoon renderer and VRML file format reader plug-in. Other new functions include Q3TriMesh_Optimize, Q3TriMesh_OptimizeData, Q3Int64_Add, Q3Int64_Subtract, Q3Int64_Uns32_Add, Q3Int64_Uns32_Subtract, and Q3Memory_GetStatistics.

And if you've encountered any issues with plug-in loading on Windows, this should be more reliable now. There's also been an improvement to texture caching in the interactive renderer, so that if multiple texture shaders use the same texture object, only one copy goes into OpenGL texture memory. Plus, various other bugs have been addressed.