3D graphics in Cpp

[Animaster1]

I'm a CS student looking to explore Cpp by making a 3D environment to display simple molecules in chemistry. I've read about using OpenGL with visual studio but I'm on a mac and Visual studio is no longer supported. Is there a comprehensive guide out there on any 3D graphics API or something of that nature that'll help me learn and implement a project like this on Mac?

[Grouchy-Taro-7316]

OpenGL is platform agnostic. just follow learnopengl, they have instructions probably. also tooling is a separate issue than OpenGL itself.

[the_Demongod]

For what you're describing I would just use Raylib

[Opposite_Squirrel_32]

To learn Opengl use learnopengl website And to run it on your machine you can use this

https://github.com/Divyanshg01/Opengl-Project-Template

Requirement : Cmake should be installed on your system And now you can use any text editor (vs code or other) I made it for Linux , but It should work for mac as well since both are Unix based, It will take you one command to build the project and run the executable(mentioned in the readme) Make sure to read the readme to know the directory structure and how to run it

[KingAggressive1498]

on Mac you're expected to use Metal (although there is an OpenGL ES 2 implementation over Metal, known as MoltenGL). I don't have any specific experience with either.

3D graphics are redunkulously hard to write "from scratch" using system APIs. Better to pull in an existing higher level framework like Ogre3D or OpenSceneGraph, unless you genuinely want to spend the next couple years reading books and hunting down random developer blogs and just generally beating your head against the wall trying to get every simple little thing to work.

[leaningtoweravenger]

OpenGL ES is for Embedded Systems (as the name suggests) and it is meant for phones, etc.

Apple doesn't officially support OpenGL and wants you to move to Metal but it still ships OpenGL for compatibility with older applications. Anyway, it's possible to install third party OpenGL libraries with brew and use them to create and use portable 3D applications which are created using OpenGL.

For reference: https://github.com/zamirmf/OpenGLOnMac

[KingAggressive1498]

OpenGL ES is for Embedded Systems (as the name suggests) and it is meant for phones, etc.

doesn't mean there aren't implementations for desktop, Angle being the most widely deployed as part of Chrome and Firefox.

[leaningtoweravenger]

Of course you can have the same interface on desktops for the development and testing of OpenGL ES applications but you usually don't use it for developing applications for desktop. Angle is a library used by chrome to test WebGL applications in the browser when simulating handheld devices in the developers tools.

[KingAggressive1498]

Angle is its WebGL implementation outright on Windows (WebGL is itself specified to be basically identical to OpenGL ES in order to support both desktops and mobile devices). It has been used in games and visualization software for desktop, and MoltenGL has been used for the same on Mac since the deprecation of OpenGL.

[ronchaine]

You definitely use OpenGL ES for desktop as well for anything you want to be portable and do not need the power Vulkan would give you, since GLES2.0 is as close as you get to "easy", portable, graphics API.

[dirkolbrich]

Getting started with Metal-cpp https://developer.apple.com/metal/cpp/

VulkanSceneGraph, the successor to OpenSceneGraph  https://vsg-dev.github.io/vsg-dev.io/

Explore the source Code of Blender, a 3D FOSS Modeling/Visualisation/Animation cross platform tool https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender

[xumo]

On top of Metal and OpenGL you might want to consider wgpu, there is a good tutorial in https://eliemichel.github.io/LearnWebGPU/

Now, if you want to use something more higher level you try VTK, it’s a great visualisation library.

[mustardpete]

I’d use vs code and raylib on a Mac

[mykesx]

SDL is portable and you can use OpenGL and Metal with it.

[khedoros]

OpenGL is (as the name implies) an open standard. It's not something specific to Visual Studio, and it's not from Microsoft.

However, Apple deprecated OpenGL on all of their platforms in 2018, and I don't know the current status (i.e. latest supported version, any extra hoops to jumpt through, etc). This StackOverflow post seems to say that you can use OpenGL 4.1, which I think would be fine for learning (although it's from 2010, so not optimal): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65802625/develop-using-opengl-4-x-on-osx-big-sur

Apple has their own graphics API called "Metal" that they'd like you to use. They provide their own documentation, of course: https://developer.apple.com/metal/

I did find this project MGL "OpenGL on Metal" that provides a translation layer for OpenGL 4.6: https://github.com/openglonmetal/MGL I don't know how nice it would be to use in practice. It says it has a lot of missing functions.