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Comparison of Qt 3D and Qt 3D Studio

Qt 3D

Qt 3D is programmer-oriented engine building toolkit and great for both simple and complex scenes. Qt 3D simplifies the implementation of advanced rendering techniques.

Qt 3D Studio

Qt 3D Studio consists of both a 3D editor and a 3D runtime. Qt 3D Studio is designer-oriented and makes it easy to build complex 3D scenes with states and transitions that can be used in and controlled by Qt applications.

Use Case Comparison

Whether you should use Qt 3D or Qt 3D Studio for your project depends on your use case. Below, we list some common use cases and how they apply to the two:

Creating 3D Scenes

Use Case	Qt 3D	Qt 3D Studio
Graphically editing a 3D scene for use in a Qt application.	No built-in editor. Support for importing common 3D formats.	Yes, use the Qt 3D Studio Editor.
Creating a 3D scene programmatically.	Suitable.	Creating meshes and materials dynamically is supported.
Using existing materials and effects.	Some available in Qt3D.Extras.	Many available in the Qt 3D Studio editor.
Combine existing materials and effects.	May require rewriting some of the shaders from Qt3D.Extras to form custom combinations.	Suitable.

Effects

Use Case	Qt 3D	Qt 3D Studio
Creating a simple multi-pass rendering pipeline.	Suitable.	Suitable.
Using custom shaders.	Suitable.	Suitable.
Layer-based compositing.	Suitable.	Suitable.
Implementing custom rendering techniques such as volumetric rendering.	Suitable.	Not suitable.

Formats

Use Case	Qt 3D	Qt 3D Studio
Importing external formats.	All formats supported by plugins such as Assimp. See SceneLoader for a full list.	A number of formats are supported. See 2D Assets and 3D Assets for details.

Creating 3D Engines and Editors

Use Case	Qt 3D	Qt 3D Studio
Creating a custom graphical 3D editor.	Suitable.	Not possible.
Creating a custom 3D engine.	Suitable.	Not possible.

Available under certain Qt licenses.
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