Renderable

In computer graphics and game development, a renderable is an object that can be submitted to a graphics pipeline for drawing. It represents the data and state required to produce pixels on the screen, such as geometry, material, and transform information.

A renderable typically consists of geometry data (vertices and indices), a material or shader, and per-instance state such as a transformation matrix, textures, or color. In many engines, renderables are separate from the scene graph and are managed by a rendering subsystem as they move through the pipeline.

During rendering, renderables undergo processes such as visibility testing and frustum culling, optionally level-of-detail selection, and sorting to minimize state changes. Each renderable provides a way to render itself, often via a render or draw method that applies transforms, binds resources, and issues draw calls.

Variants include mesh renderables, sprite renderables, and particle renderables. Some systems use instanced rendering to draw many renderables that share the same geometry and material. The concept emphasizes the separation of renderable data from logic, enabling efficient rendering and batching.

The term is related to drawable, render queue, and scene graph concepts. While the specifics vary by engine, renderable generally denotes any object that can be drawn, from a single triangle to complex models, depending on architectural choices.