A Trip Down the Mesa3D Pipeline

The aim of this document is to give an overview of how Mesa3D works internally by following a simple OpenGL scene render from beginning to end. It’s intended for anyone interested in how a low level 3D renderer is implemented, and potential Mesa3D developers.

The title was inspired by the computer graphics columns written by Jim Blinn for IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications.

The demo program renders a cube either as a wireframe or lit but not textured using the Mesa3D offscreen renderer. An actual hardware device driver might be more realistic in this age when even smartphones have GPUs, but would also be messier and more difficult to understand.