The Qt Company Announces Its New High-Level 3D API - Qt Quick 3D

Continuing on from the recent technical vision for the Qt6 tool-kit, The Qt Company has now announced their new high-level 3D API they are developing for this next major release of Qt.

Qt Quick 3D is this new high-level API for creating 3D content for user-interfaces out of Qt Quick without the need for any external engine. Qt Quick 3D will make use of the renderer currently employed by the Qt 3D STUDIO.

The company hopes Qt Quick 3D will provide unified graphics support, a easy-to-use API, unified tooling with the existing Qt Quick, cross-platform performance/compatibility, and other features. Qt Quick 3D will be rendered on the back-end by Vulkan, Metal, Direct3D, or OpenGL depending upon platform. This new Qt Quick 3D API isn't a replacement for the existing Qt 3D.

While thinking of Qt6, The Qt Company is aiming for Qt Quick 3D to be a technical preview addition for Qt 5.14 and they already have an external component that can be used today with Qt 5.12 LTS and newer.

More details about Qt Quick 3D can be found from today's announcement and mailing list post.