Intermediate Graphics Library (IGL) is a cross-platform library that commands the GPU. It encapsulates common GPU functionality with a low-level cross-platform interface. IGL is designed to support multiple backends implemented on top of various graphics APIs (e.g. OpenGL, Metal and Vulkan) with a common interface.

There are a lot of good options for abstracting GPU API’s; each making different trade-offs. We designed IGL around the following priorities:

1. Low-level, forward-looking API. IGL embraces modern abstractions (command buffers, state containers, bindless, etc) and is designed to give more control than OpenGL’s state machine API. As a result, IGL can have leaner backends for modern API’s (e.g. Metal, Vulkan).
2. Minimal overhead for C++. IGL supports new or existing native rendering code without overhead of language interop or the need for other language runtimes.
3. Reach + scale in production. IGL has been globally battle-tested for broad device reliability (especially the long-tail of Android devices as well as Quest 2/3/Pro compatibility for OpenGL/Vulkan) and performance-tuned on our apps.

Supported rendering backends

• Metal 2+
• OpenGL 2.x (requires GL_ARB_framebuffer_object)
• OpenGL 3.1+
• OpenGL ES 2.0+
• Vulkan 1.2
• WebGL 2.0

Supported platforms

• Android
• iOS
• Linux
• macOS
• Windows
• WebAssembly

API Support

	Windows	Linux	macOS	iOS	Android
Vulkan 1.2			(MoltenVK)		(Quest 2/3/Pro)
OpenGL ES 2.0 - 3.0	(Angle)	(Angle)
OpenGL ES 3.1 - 3.2	(Angle)	(Angle)
OpenGL 3.1 - 4.6
Metal 2

Build

Before building, run the deployment scripts:

python3 deploy_content.py
python3 deploy_deps.py

These scripts download external third-party dependencies. Please check Dependencies for the full list.

• Windows

cd build
cmake .. -G "Visual Studio 17 2022"

• Linux

sudo apt-get install clang xorg-dev libxinerama-dev libxcursor-dev libgles2-mesa-dev libegl1-mesa-dev libglfw3-dev libglew-dev libstdc++-12-dev
cd build
cmake .. -G "Unix Makefiles"

• macOS

cd build
cmake .. -G "Xcode" -DIGL_WITH_VULKAN=OFF

• iOS

cd build
cmake .. -G Xcode -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../third-party/deps/src/ios-cmake/ios.toolchain.cmake -DDEPLOYMENT_TARGET=13.0 -DPLATFORM=OS64

• Android

The Gradle project is located within the build/android folder.

• WebAssembly

Please install Emscripten and Ninja.

cd build
emcmake cmake .. -G Ninja
cmake --build .

Screenshots

License

IGL is released under the MIT license, see LICENSE.md for the full text as well as third-party library acknowledgements. SparkSL Compiler is released under the SparkSL Compiler License, see LICENSE for full text.