API
API stands for Application Programming Interface, API can be seen as a set of building blocks that programmers can put together the way they like to create software. Most Operating Systems provide an API for programmers to create things with. Since that programmers would use that API to create software, the "building blocks" are the same so that people who use those OS's would have an easier time learning that software.
Graphics Pipeline
The graphics pipeline refers to the steps taken to create 2D raster representation from a 3D Scene. This pipeline turns the mathematical 3D model into what we see that is displayed. The stages of the Graphics Pipeline consists of this.
3D Geometric Primitives: This is the first step, this step consists of making the scene out of triangles as its the most primitive geometric shape.
Modeling and Transformation: This step consists of transforming the local coordinate system to the 3D World coordinate system.
Camera Transformation: This step transforms the 3D world coordinate system to the 3D camera worl coordinate system with the camera as the origin.
Lighting: This is the step when the scene is illuminated and it calculates the various surfaces reflective properties.
Project Transformation: This step transforms the 3D world coordinates to the 2D view of the camera.
Clipping: Primitive Geometry not visible from the camera are discarded at this stage.
Scan conversion or Rasterization: This step is complex as each step from this point is used on every pixel on screen. This step consists of turning the 2D image space into a raster format.
Texturing, Fragment Shading: This step gives the various pixels colour based on values from rasterization.
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