Next Tutorial: Installation
What is Gazebo Rendering?
Gazebo Rendering is an open source library that provides an abstraction layer to multiple rendering engines. The goal is to provide a set of unified C++ rendering APIs that are rendering-engine-agnostic. For instance, a scene created through the Gazebo Rendering API could be rendered using an OpenGL based rendering library or through a ray tracer. You have the option to choose which rendering engine to use at run time.
Gazebo Rendering has a plugin architecture. Each rendering engine is integrated in the form of a Gazebo Rendering plugin. In a nutshell, a plugin is essentially an interface to the underlying engine. Gazebo Rendering exposes a set of abstract public API interfaces and the engine plugins provide the implementation. So when a user specifies a particular rendering engine to use, the relevant plugin will be loaded and all rendering calls will be made through that rendering engine.