MERCURY - 3D SOLUTIONS FOR GRAPHIC DEVELOPERS, ENGINEERS AND SCI. Gmail: Help Centre. Www.formz.com | home. OpenGL: Home Page. The OpenGL API (Application Programming Interface) began as an initiative by SGI to create a single, vendor-independent API for the development of 2D and 3D graphics applications. Prior to the introduction of OpenGL, many hardware vendors had different graphics libraries. This situation made it expensive for software developers to support versions of their applications on multiple hardware platforms, and it made porting of applications from one hardware platform to another very time-consuming and difficult.
SGI saw the lack of a standard graphics API as an inhibitor to the growth of the 3D marketplace and decided to lead an industry group in creating such a standard. The result of this work was the OpenGL API, which was largely based on earlier work on the SGI® IRIS GL™ library. The OpenGL API began as a specification, then SGI produced a sample implementation that hardware vendors could use to develop OpenGL drivers for their hardware. OpenGL - The Industry Standard for High Performance Graphics. Alias Maya Certifications, 3D, Animation, Corporate Training, Sc. Terragen™