Software Rendering

In the context of rendering (computer graphics), software rendering refers to a rendering process that is unaided by any specialized graphics hardware, such as a graphics card. The rendering takes place entirely in the CPU. Rendering everything with the (general-purpose) CPU has the main advantage that it is not restricted to the (limited) capabilities of graphics hardware.

Software rendering can be split into two main categories: real-time rendering (also known as online rendering), and pre-rendering (also called offline rendering). Real-time rendering is used to interactively render a scene, like in 3D computer games, and generally each frame must be rendered in a few miliseconds. Offline rendering is used to create realistic images and movies, where each frame can take hours or days to complete.