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macoscore-animationcore-graphicsquartz-graphics

Does Core Animation makes use Quartz2D and OpenGL 3D or they are at same level in OSX architechture?

I have slight confusion in apple's documentation. I am not able to understand that in Graphics and Media Layer, Core Animation is above Quartz framework or in the same line? From image it looks below. Am I right?

Does Core Animation makes use Quartz2D and OpenGL 3D or they are at same level?

Thank you Rahul

Solution

  • It's not really clear from the illustration, but Core Animation makes use of OpenGL (for compositing) and Quartz (for rendering 2D graphics), so it's a higher-level framework than the other two.

    Quartz is tightly integrated with Core Animation and the two are often used in combination, for example when animating a custom layer/view that's drawn with Quartz.

    OpenGL is mostly abstracted away by Core Animation and while there is some glue for special applications (like games), you usually wouldn't use OpenGL directly while using Core Animation.