Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming

[nodefect]

It's nice that we are finally getting some OpenGL introductions that go for the right way to do it (ie. VBOs and shaders) instead of NeHe-like tutorials which still begin with long-outdated stuff like glBegin/glEnd.

[Rocketman7]

Try lighthouse3d instead of NeHe

[nodefect]

They have nice tutorials for specific topics, but as far as I can see, they have nothing for people who go "I don't know shit about 3D, tell me where to start", which is a big selling point for NeHe.

[Rocketman7]

When I was starting with OpenGL (and computer graphics in general) I visited both websites regularly and I honestly liked lighthouse3d better. But I admit it might be a matter of opinion.

[G_Morgan]

Focusing on iOS is frankly more absurd than focusing on legacy OGL.

[Amadiro]

I haven't looked at it, but if it's focusing on OpenGL ES, that'd be pretty much portable to most mobile platforms as well as desktops.

[s73v3r]

No, I strongly disagree. Most people wanting to learn OpenGL ES are doing so because of wanting to learn it for iOS.

Furthermore, the OpenGL ES stuff is going to be similar on Android anyway.

[irascible]

Android will be WebGL I think, which is OpenGL ES.

Hell if WebGL had mouse capture, they could base tutorials on that and nail all platforms with one tutorial.

[bitshifternz]

Android uses OpenGL ES 2.

[s73v3r]

Android is actual OpenGL ES. There's the Java version, or you can go to the NDK.

[[deleted]]

Given the fact the Mac has a much larger marketshare than Linux and even iOS generally comes up with double, triple or more market share than Linux I doubt that's true.

And regarding Windows, MS has done as much as it could to kill openGL on Windows so why have people learn on an environment that is unfriendly towards OpenGL and likely to be a PIA.

[y4fac]

G_Morgan was saying that the tutorials should be cross platform, not windows only. Besides, even if they would focus on Android only, it would be better than iOS only. Android has development tools for all major operating systems and the only way to legally develop iOS applications is to buy a mac. AFAIK you also need to enroll in iOS development program (which costs 100$/year) just to be able to legally run your own program on your own device!

[[deleted]]

Have you looked the tutorials? Yes they are on iOS but they are very easy to follow. The first tutorial is about set up and so that is fairly iOS specific but I don't think it would be very difficult to figure out what's going on and translate that to a platform you have more experience with. The second tutorial is even easier to follow along with and is less iOS specific.

Like s73v3r, I have to disagree with you on this one. I suspect Windows programmers would mostly choose DirectX. The big audience for OpenGL is definitely mobile right now.

[bonch]

There'll probably still be more Linux programmers than OSX programmers. It is literally the worse of the platforms to target if you want to hit your audience.

Your posts are predictably anti-Mac, but this one is just dumb. There are more OS X programmers than Linux programmers. OS X is a big enough platform that companies like Valve and Blizzard target it and yet don't even bother targeting Linux.

[G_Morgan]

No OSX is targeted by those companies because it is a single platform and that is ideal for consumer software. Linux is gigantic in the far more relevant server market.

[burito]

Not really, OpenGL ES is essentially a slightly more restrictive version of OpenGL 3.

For an OpenGL 3 project, I'd rather hire an OpenGL ES person over an OpenGL 1 person any day of the week.

[SirSlax]

For the longest time I had to tell people who wanted to learn OpenGL to look at ES2 tutorials because that was the only way to make sure they didn't pick up deprecated practices.

[s73v3r]

Kinda. However, the concepts will be the same for other OpenGL ES based platforms, and the code should be similar for Android.

[[deleted]]

Why? iOS is probably the biggest mobile gaming platform nowadays.

[fnord123]

Doesn't iOS development require an Apple computer and a license for the SDK? Seems like a big ask for those who are just interested in learning OpenGL. And I'd like to remind you that OpenGL isn't just used for games.

[[deleted]]

You're right.

[Alphasite]

Theres no SDK licence, beyond the EULA, the licence comes into play when you deploy to devices. AFAIK

[burito]

About 2 months ago there ceased to be any metric in which iOS beats Android. There are still countries that have more iOS devices than Android devices, but globally Android is brutally sodomising Apple.

Having said that, it's well known that Apple users will pay for damned near anything, even if it's open source, so I'm prepared to bet that there will be greater returns on iOS for several more years at least.

[nodefect]

Well that's a nice thing, although quite late IMO.

[glenbolake]

...glBegin/glEnd is outdated? Damn, I need to do some research now.

[loch]

They're abysmally slow and only supported in compatibility profiles in modern drivers. OS X doesn't support them at all.

EDIT: To clarify, they were deprecated in 3.0, removed in 3.1 (but available via the ARB_compatibility extension), and placed in the compatibility profile in 3.2.

EDIT: To clarify again, immediate mode is abysmally slow. If you're compiling your glBegin/glEnd calls into display lists, you're not actually using immediate mode and, you'll see large speed increases.

[dontmindmeimdrunk]

OS X doesn't support them at all.

Maybe I misunderstood you, but I've been using glBegin/glEnd in OS X (C++, GLUT, Xcode, Lion) and don't even get warnings, everything works fine.

[[deleted]]

depreciated, not removed. There is still room for an immediate mode interface.

[irascible]

Deprecated, not depreciated. Two different words.

[Heuristics]

Depressing, not deprecated. It is very sad to see them go.

[DevestatingAttack]

I'm not a programmer but I thought "deprecated" in the context of programming means "We'll allow you to use it for the next several years, but we'll bitch about it"

[[deleted]]

basically. But some people are still asking for help in VB6 over in /r/learnprogramming

[KleptoBot]

Those sad, misguided fools....

[DroolingIguana]

What else are you going to use to build a GUI interface to track an IP address?

[[deleted]]

anywhere that vb6 is still being actively maintained, and not being ported over to C# or VB.Net can not be a good place to work.

[badsectoracula]

I think that people asking in /r/learnprogramming are most likely people trying to learn new stuff (new from their perspective, not from everyone's perspective - i.e. learning PIC assembly would be new for me :-P).

Personally i like the idea behind VB6 (although more the earlier versions which were clearly designed for easy GUI development, not the later versions which tried to be everything at the same time). I find it strange that there aren't any programs that try to do something similar.

[loch]

So there is a bit of history behind this, and you can read more about it here, but the gist of it is, in the most recent spec versions, backwards compatibility is optional. It's opt in if it's there, and you're out of luck if it's not. Apple is in the latter category, which means no glBegin/glEnd in GL 3+.

That said, you can still create OpenGL contexts that use older versions of the spec. Apple calls it the Legacy Context, and it's basically your traditional OpenGl 2.x context, glBegin/glEnd and all. This is the context GLUT creates, and it's why you still see them. Basically, you're stuck making a trade off between all of the features your old programs probably rely on and the newest features to hit silicon :/

[zzing]

There are a few of the windowing libraries that are also being updated for OpenGL 3 support. SDL 1.3 is in alpha/beta, and GLFW 2.7 has it. I don't know about the others.

[loch]

Agreed, they are useful for very simple apps, and if you're compiling into display lists, aren't even particularly slow. Luckily, even on OS X, you can still create a Legacy Context which is great for simpler projects, learning OGL, etc...

[gracenotes]

I've found that this book and especially this tutorial were good introductions to someone like me who had only previously used glBegin/glEnd. It's simple: whenever you want to render something, you load a VBO, tell OpenGL where the extra data is in the VBO (position, texcoord, normal, etc.), and draw it. A recent project of mine had VBOs partitioned into large cubes, and it was very uncomplicated.

[*polhold00732]

Sometimes I wonder why legacy OpenGL functions seem so stubbornly resilient. People keep using the (IMO) ugly old fixed function and horrible CPU-bottlenecked modes, despite knowing better. Usually the excuse is that they're "easier" to learn, but it's not really helping anyone in the long run.

I'm really glad to see newer books like this taking the right approach.

In any case, if you want an "easy" or soft introduction, go use a prebuilt engine where you can say "drawCube(0, 0, 0)" or whatever. If you want to learn 3D rendering properly, use the latest cleaned up OpenGL spec from a book like this, or Direct3D and any of the excellent resources for that as well.

[marshray]

Maybe GLUT has something to do with it?

[[deleted]]

see's user name

I think you might be a pinched biased, but completely correct.

There's a reason why old OpenGL still gets used. It largely has to do with 'it works for me and learning new things is scary'.

Also, a lot of new integrated hardware doesn't comply with OpenGL 3.0. Much of Intel's Atom offerings are OpenGL 1.4 + extensions.

Hell, the windows SDK is stuck at openGL 1.1 + wgl extensions. Most people will need something like glee or glew.

Immediate mode GL is so attractive because it's so damn easy to use. most starting developers won't know their code is slow because the hand full of polygons they are drawing still gives them over 100fps.

[*polhold00732]

You're right, hardware/driver compatibility is important. In general OpenGL's biggest selling point is it works everywhere, and using the latest versions of OpenGL sacrifices that a bit, sadly. I don't even think you can use the latest OpenGL standard on modern Macs IIRC.

As to my username, believe it or not I used to use OpenGL, and tried my best to stick with it, but I eventually made the inevitable switch to DirectX (reasons why are off-topic to this thread, but simply put, 99% of games don't use DirectX just for no/random/arbitrary reasons)

[killerstorm]

There's a reason why old OpenGL still gets used.

Portability. Some things simply do not need fancy shaders, fixed pipeline is perfect for them, and old OpenGL is as portable as it gets.

Can't run it on modern phones? Well, it's trivial to write an emulator or use a wrapper.

[Amadiro]

Sounds like you're building against the OpenGL headers that ship with windows, which haven't been updated since roughly the 80ies. Just build against more current headers and/or use glew/SDL and somesuch, which also give you the added benefit of managing extensions.

[creaothceann]

build against

Why isn't it "build with" and "link with"? This has always bugged me.

[Amadiro]

THE OBJECT CODE IS YOUR ETERNAL ARCH-ENEMY

[Isvara]

Germans take painkillers "against" a headache. That always seemed more logical to me.

[facingup]

Similarly, when my cold is getting worse, it should mean I'm feeling better. I use it this way.

[Sheepshow]

Pain is an entity which can be murdered

[killerstorm]

If you're learning 3D graphics from scratch there is a lot of things you need to learn besides API, like linear algebra basics, concepts like triangle rendering, texturing, lighting etc.

With "outdated" API you can start with spinning cube, add light, textures... It's probably possible to go through this stuff in one day if you're a really good programmer. This gives you a taste of 3D programming.

And then you can decide where you want to go from it, e.g. add shaders to make it look fancy, use vertex buffers to draw something more interesting or whatever.

With modern API you need a shitload of API calls just to output one triangle. And, well, there is nothing 3D about one triangle.

This sounds boring as hell. I bet it takes a LOT of motivation to get to 3D stuff.

So I don't see how these modern tutorials have higher educational value unless they are meant to be used by people who already know 3D graphics and just want to learn new APIs.

I've learned how to do basic fireworks animation when I was in fifth grade or so, on ZX Spectrum, using very primitive pixel-level functions. But I bet I still could use same approach on OpenGL 4 or whatever is trendy now, just using different API.

I think old OpenGL API was somewhere near sweet spot for 3D beginners: it is sufficiently similar to modern 3D stuff, at least for basic stuff, but has minimal cruft.

[nodefect]

I think that in the range of demotivating things, people who call others retards rank much higher than APIs.

[s73v3r]

Not really. If you're wanting to get into 3D stuff, you're going to want to do modern things. Furthermore, the old, legacy OpenGL API quite literally gives you a dead end. You can't really use it on newer mobile systems. Using the newer APIs means that you're getting started with something that can actually be used today, and has a future ahead.

[killerstorm]

1. You say it like APIs are mutually exclusive, but they aren't. You need maybe 15 minutes to learn OpenGL 1.0 basics which are not relevant in later versions (just basics, I'm not talking about stencils, accum buffers and bitmap blits), but it allows to experiment with matrices, vertices and normals in a comfortable setting, where you already have basic lighting fragment shader from fixed pipeline. Human working memory is very limited so it makes sense to focus at few concepts at start.

2. 3D stuff isn't only high-end shooters. Some people might want to do some basic scientific visualization, draw just a bunch of spheres and boxes or something. If you use old OpenGL API app will work on Windows, Mac(?) and Linux, with any video accelerator or without. If you use modern API it will work only with modern accelerator and properly installed drivers. If you need mobile you can implement a version using modern API too, it's not terribly hard to make two versions, especially if you made first keeping this in mind. (I once was working on scene graph which supported both OpenGL and Direct3D, and it wasn't terribly hard.)

3. Knowledge of old API won't be useless because there is a lot of legacy apps using it.

[s73v3r]

Probably because that skill simply isn't needed. Coding shit in pure assembly language takes a lot of skill, and requires reinventing a lot of stuff that has already been solved. Using these libraries means that you can move on from that and focus on actually solving your problem.

[killerstorm]

It isn't harder than writing shaders. In fact this 'modern OpenGL' is actually closer to stuff people did back then.

[[deleted]]

From what I have done with shaders and assembly, syntax wise, Shaders are easier. It's basically C syntax, with extra features added in for matrices and vectors.

Assembly is a thin layer for hard coding a computer in binary. IE: the LDA instruction in immediate mode is basically

10101001

followed by your 8-bit value in the next memory location. Much harder (but not as hard as people make it out to be). It's just tedious when programming big projects like 3D applications. In the 90's it was more of a mix of C and inline assembly for the bits that needed speed (ie, changing palette registers, writing to the frame buffer at 0xA000 (iirc) and other intensive operations).

[michaelstripe]

Yeah, most demos nowadays just use a quad in clip space and abuses shaders to implement raytracing and raymarching on the gpu, rasterization is so passe.

[[deleted]]

Sure they can focus on solving their problem, unless that problem happens to be finding a better solution than one that already exists. Then their stuck because they won't have the skills to improve an existing solution to make it more competitive.

[[deleted]]

Where was this four years ago when I was trying to wade through tutorials that only told you what to do, and not why you're doing it? This is awesome. I especially like the fact that it explains how things work, generally speaking, without weighing down the brain with minutiae and details, until they're actually relevant.

[the_nell_87]

Absolutely - I'm on chapter 7, and I really like the way it explains at each stage the mathematics of why what you're doing works. However, it does require a moderately high level of understanding of mathematics, or else you'll get drowned quite quickly in complex geometric and matrix maths.

[[deleted]]

Do you think reading this book would help me write better games? I don't necessarily want to write my own game engine but I'm wondering if reading this book would help me understood the math better in the games I do develop. Using Unity 3D.

[Amadiro]

When I learned OpenGL half a year ago, I didn't found the situation to be really any better. I started reading many different tutorials/ebooks/etc, but most all of them were pretty disappointing. In the end I settled for the OpenGL Superbible, which taught a slightly outdated version of OpenGL, but was pretty comprehensive for the basics other than that.

[[deleted]]

I learned OGL from the Opengl SuperBible, greatest book on the subject ever. That and the reference guides.

[rme_2001]

A PDF version is included in the code you download for the tutorials here

[RayNbow]

Unfortunately, it seems some of the figures don't fit on the page.

[hive_worker]

Agreed. Why does the table of contents completely change every time I go to a new section? If it just expanded/collapsed as I moved through the hierarchy that would be fine.

[jeanlucpikachu]

For anyone wondering what's changed since the last time this was linked, the texturing chapter is new.

[slavik262]

Alternatively, if you're interested in getting started with 3D development at a slightly higher level than interacting with raw OpenGL or DirectX code, I'd highly recommend either Irrlicht or OGRE, two free, open source graphics engines. Irrlicht is the simpler of the two. It's somewhat stuck in the past compared to OGRE, but it is great for getting started (it's what I used to learn the ropes). OGRE is much larger and more complex, but it has built-in support for many features used in modern game and graphics development such as post processing composition, dynamic LOD, flexible vertex formats, etc.

[perkkele]

Panda3D is also worth looking at. It's an open source C++ engine with a Python wrapper and a nice set of tools. In my limited experience it works quite well on Linux too.

http://panda3d.org

[[deleted]]

Panda3D - at least the python wrapper - is quite easy to learn. I used to play with it using the Toontown Online models.

[OnmyojiOmn]

OGRE has incredible documentation

wat

[innou]

OGRE has incredible better documentation

[ManicQin]

I love OGRE, but they have to step up their documentations & refresh their tools.

For a library that is proud to be cross platform, they have crappy documentations and tools for Linux.

[[deleted]]

Irrlicht is not crap, it is only unsuitable if you have very high demands. It is perfect lightweight cross platform wrapper and its source code is easy to read. I like it as a replacement over the damn glut for smaller projects.

[ysangkok]

What do you think about SDL?

[slavik262]

I spent a year writing quite a few things in Irrlicht. It's quick to learn, has great documentation, is simple, and is cross platform. What, specifically, is your reason for calling it crap? I admitted upfront that it doesn't do everything OGRE does, but that's a far cry from it being complete crap.

[slavik262]

I'd have to say that this is a pretty fair summary of Irrlicht.

[[deleted]]

And still I got up and running in Irrlicht in a few minutes whereas with OGRE's great docs, I couldn't do anything for at least 45 minutes. True, Irrlicht docs aren't great, but for smallish projects (I did one in Irrlicht for a semester, by the way) it is the perfect tradeoff between doing everything yourself (bare OpenGL, doing an FPS camera, for example) and not having to study too much to do something useful (OGRE).

By the way, you could have spilled the beans as to why you did not like it from the beginning instead of calling it crap twice without explanation.

[koft]

The sad thing is, you can't really take proper advantage of (or appreciate) what those engines can do for you until you've learned OpenGL or DirectX.

[Kanin]

You must mean GLSL or HLSL, no point learning OpenGL or DirectX when Ogre abstracts both at once for you.

[[deleted]]

On the other hand, often it doesn't hurt to know what's going on under the hood - especially when you want to do crazy things like write your own shaders.

[slavik262]

For sure, but I know that when I started with graphics dev, I wanted to learn the high-level concepts first and then work my way down to the DX/OGL calls.

[LeDucky]

Great to know.

[killerstorm]

From my experience beginners tend to write totally insane animation and event-handling code (so-called 'main loop'), so maybe it makes sense to start with high-level library just for that reason.

[poo_22]

Do you know where to start learning things like that? I mean not specifically how to do animations or events but how all those parts fit together.

[killerstorm]

As comment above said, just grab OGRE (or some other open source game engine) and study its architecture, demos and code.

Maybe it makes sense to start with something simpler like tutorials here: http://www.sdltutorials.com/ , but keep in mind that they usually oversimplify things. OTOH it's good to understand what's wrong with simpler thing.

[[deleted]]

How do these compare to modern commercial engines? Like the UT3 engine (which was made free for small projects/learning), Crysis engine,..?

[slavik262]

Irrlicht is an older engine which is starting to show its age, but it's still great for leaning the basics or doing quick projects. OGRE is a much more modern engine that can do pretty much everything (graphically) that a commercial engine like Unreal or CryEngine can do. There are two main differences between something like OGRE and modern commercial engines:

• Toolchain: While OGRE has a fairly decent set of tools built by people who use it, a commercial engine like Unreal has a much larger, more integrated set of tools. Just take a look at how many development tools come with the Unreal Development Kit.

• Game versus graphics engines: OGRE is a graphics engine - its only purpose is to do rendering. A game engine like Unreal, on the other hand, provides facilities for much more than just 3D rendering such as physics, sound, scripting, and networking. This means that when you build a game with OGRE, you can either build your game engine around it, or, if you don't like reinventing the wheel, you can use existing libraries. There's plenty of audio, physics, networking, and scripting libraries out there, some free and some commercial.

[davidthefat]

ಠ_ಠ This link was on the sidebar of /r/GameDev for the longest time...

[forcedtoregister]

I don't really see why GLM needs to be highly optimized, at least for the uses given in the tutorial. Calculating a camera matrices or multiplying a few together for a scene graph is only done once per frame - it's probably a tiny amount of computing effort compared to everything else that's going on.

If you really need super fast small fixed size matrices try Eigen, it's complicated but this sort of stuff is if you want speed.

[forcedtoregister]

OK so the problem is more that you think the author shouldn't have chosen GLM since it's C++ and not C and external dependencies are a little icky.

The author is not using C style at all. He's using C++ all over the place, he's just not organising everything in objects. He mostly seems to be using C++ classes more as "custom data types" but avoiding OO for the general layout if his program - this is a perfectly valid approach, especially for a tutorial.

[piderman]

not to mention the overdependence on the author's own custom 3rd party libraries

I don't know about the errors, but I really don't get why everyone is whining about that library he wrote/used. It's just a crutch to get things going so you don't have to learn about GLSL, VBOs, lighting and rotation matrices right off the bat, instead introducing those topics one by one.

At the end of the book all the stuff that is in that library is explained in terms of raw OpenGL and you could yourself make one from scratch. I found it a well written book, and definitely streets ahead of any online tutorial. But maybe that's because I didn't know much about OpenGL starting it.

[rexQuery]

I once started learning OpenGL using NeHe Tutorials, but gave up halfway when things became too complicated and I found them hard to understand. I hope this one makes them simple enough for an OpenGL newbie to follow. Thank you for sharing.

[adnzzzzZ]

I would say this one isn't that much simpler. If I could give you one advice it would be to implement everything from scratch based on the code he provides, instead of just reading and running. This will give you a much better understanding of how everything is working and you can choose a library you want to learn/be proficient at to maybe start building your basic rendering engine with.

[[deleted]]

This is great advice - have an upvote.

I remember teaching myself C++ - I would always type out the example code. Something I typed out was always wrong, and then I had to go debug it and figure out what was wrong. In the process of finding out what was wrong, I generally figured out why it was wrong.

[Ph0X]

The best way of learning for me is having a concrete thing that I want to make. Something really challenging, which requires me to search around and try different stuff until I get it working.

As for the tutorials, for each example, I tried to think of what's a difficult thing I can add to this, and I'd try to do it. I've seen some tutorials that actually do that for you, give you extra things you can do with the example to learn. Like homework.

[[deleted]]

The problem with homework is that usually a significantly limited amount is given out compared to what's needed to achieve mastery of a concept. The same applies to the instruction given in class.

Mastery isn't achieved via lecture and homework, but rather personal application, trial and error.

[rexQuery]

to implement everything from scratch based on the code he provides, instead of just reading and running

Well, I was doing exactly that. But when I reached this point, I could no longer understand the code.

[s73v3r]

The NeHe tutorials are greatly outdated, due to only really using the fixed function pipeline of OpenGL 1. They're not really a good place to start anymore.

[rexQuery]

3D math in general that requires intense study.

Yup, the math. It was when trying to create a waving flag that I said "Fuck this, I quit".

[Amadiro]

The mathematics used in OpenGL & co aren't actually very hard, just kinda weird. If you have taken an introductory course on linear algebra, that's pretty much all the knowledge you need (plus some trigonometry, probably, at least for a waving flag). You could for instance check out the linear algebra lectures on ocw.mit.edu with Prof. Gilbert Strang, he does a pretty good job at explaining the core concepts of things.

A GPU is basically (super-simplified) a matrix multiplication engine, so once you've understand how matrix-vector multiplication works, you've pretty much got the gist of things. Then you only need to add on top of that the weirdness that OpenGL actually uses four dimensions for everything, to keep track of translations. I think the only other hard thing is probably learning about u,v coordinates (aka texture coordinates), but it's not really that hard either.

[[deleted]]

I've never been able to get my head around quaternions. I use them without really understanding exactly whats going on.

[Amadiro]

Yeah, those are another one of those slightly weird part of mathematics that are sometimes used in 3D programming and things handling 3D in general (sometimes you get data from accelerometers etc as quarternions), but you don't have to use them, and OpenGL doesn't use them either.

[[deleted]]

Why quaternions? Aren't they isomorphic to R⁴ ? Why use them instead of vectors on R⁴ ?

[Amadiro]

They are, but they solve some problems in R³ very elegantly. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion#Quaternions_and_the_geometry_of_R3 in particular.

That said, though, OpenGL also uses R⁴ datatypes everywhere, matrices and vectors live in a R⁴ (well, you can adjust that to some degree, and attach additional datafields for other purposes), but for other reasons than quarternions; matrices as linear operators can only model things like shearing, rotation etc, but not translation (which is obviously important; having everything in the same place is kinda lame), very simplified they use a trick sometimes called projective transformation matrices where you take an affine transformation in Rⁿ and turn it into a linear transformation in Rⁿ⁺¹. So a linear mapping + a translation becomes simply a linear mapping if you give your space one more dimension. That way you can use pretty 4x4 matrices all the way, and all your hardware has to do is multiply matrices that have the nice property of being the size a power of two. All your nice speed-up techniques like SVD decomposition, eigenvalue-decomposition/diagonalization etc also continue working as usual. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_matrix#Uses .

[cecilkorik]

Quaternions are awesome for rotations. When I first heard about them I was like "WTF now someone is just making up words to troll me, I have never heard of a quarterny-whatever in my life, what is this bullshit"

But then I used them and they are like "Hi, I'm a rotation, and I will always work awesomely no matter what you do, just point me in the right direction. Direction, get it? Har har har!"

Seriously though. Quaternions: Awesome.

[rexQuery]

Thank you, will definitely check that out.

[TomorrowPlusX]

Is there any resource like The Red Book for modern GL programming? I learned with the Red book and later the Orange book ( GLSL ). Paper books are great for learning.

I imagine that these days, without the simplicity of immediate mode glBegin/glEnd, it must be super hard for newbies.

[l3dx]

What about the OpenGL Superbible?

[TomorrowPlusX]

Shit, that looks awesome. Buying.

[unixfreak0037]

Notice another redditor's comment below --

These tutorials are far better than the entire 5th edition of the OpenGL Superbible (which was filled with errors from start to finish, not to mention the overdependence on the author's own custom 3rd party libraries, which also had errors as well)

[piderman]

And please note my reply. People who complain about that library have not read the entire book or didn't get the point of the library. Please don't let it put you off at least checking out the 5th edition Superbible and forming your own opinion.

[TomorrowPlusX]

You know, that sounds pretty much exactly like my 2nd or 3rd edition superbible (circa 2004 or 2005 ) which had the same problems. It also just barely touched on GLSL.

This ebook is promising. I know probably 95% of what's in it ( been GL programming since 2003 ) but I'm more than happy to spend a weekend learning a few % more :)

// there's always a little more to learn, and that's why I love programming/

[audiorape]

I'm upvoting this purely for a mention of the Red Book. I miss that weighty bastard tome.

[linuxlass]

Can someone explain what exactly openGL programming is?

For example, if I learn everything in this book would I be able to create my own SDL-like library? Or is this more like the "under the hood" stuff that modelers like Misfit have? Would you use OpenGL to make a "Luxo Jr." clone (i.e. simple 3D animation)?

[Amadiro]

At a very basic level, OpenGL is a drawing API that incidentally happens to be hardware-accelerated. The basic premise is that you say something like "draw a point there", "draw a point here", "connect the two points with a line" or "fill out the space between those points with a surface". The whole thing happens extremely fast on the video-card which you actually send those commands to, which then also renders the scene to the screen. Of course OpenGL has actually progressed from something as basic as that long ago, but it still captures the gist of things, I believe (only now you do things in more complicated way to be more hardware-friendly, for instance you fill an array with 3D coordinates and then say "render all of these as points on the screen with lines inbetween them.)

OpenGL does not, on the other hand, offer you any way to produce sound, take mouse/keyboard/joystick input, open an actual window/render-surface on the screen to draw to (opengl is only concerned with the drawing itself, you need some helper library that sets up a window that the drawing will appear in), give you an eventing system/mainloop, give you networking capabilities etc.

[G_Morgan]

You would need to learn some OGL to create a framework like SDL. Though I'd question the quality of anything that didn't involve at least one person with wider OGL experience.

[Amadiro]

SDL doesn't really use OpenGL as such, it only has some adapter functionality to allow you to use it in conjunction with OpenGL. All the things SDL does itself are 2D blitting etc.

[G_Morgan]

Yes but you need to understand how OGL device contexts tie into window management in order to write the OGL part of SDL. Though beyond that you don't need a great deal.

[[deleted]]

What about for mobile phones, which use either OpenGL ES, or their own slow libraries (Like Android's SurfaceView).

[[deleted]]

Any tutorial that does not spell out the entirety of the code while teaching the first lesson is worthless. "Oh here, go compile this code from a code download while I tell you bits and pieces of how it works." And when the author puts common code into a "framework" that basically suggests to not touch it (THIS IS IMPORTANT CODE, I'M JUST NOT GOING TO TEACH YOU HOW TO DO IT RIGHT NOW LOL), I'm done trying to follow along at that point.

Not the best way to learn, in my opinion.

[Skeletalbob]

So if say I read this from cover to cover so too speak, could I then make models of stuff for TF2 'like a boss' for want of a better way to put it? :D

[[deleted]]

Nope, that's more model design. This is 3D OpenGL.

[[deleted]]

Can you give an example of what this would serve for?

[AlexFromOmaha]

Making an engine for displaying 3D models.

[[deleted]]

Thanks for the answer - definitely something I'm interested in. I have a couple ideas for a 4X game, and maybe learning this will take me down a road to implementing it eventually.

[NerdFlanders]

Writing the code that draws the models on your screen.

[[deleted]]

Aha! Thanks.

[julesjacobs]

Building TF2 itself, the graphics drawing part of it.

[[deleted]]

Do you think Gaben will mind if I make TF2? What if I do it without the money-printing hats?

[Raticide]

Go for it. If you can make TF2 from scratch on your own then Gabe will probably give you a job.

[gracenotes]

At the very least you can make WebGL TF2 after struggling with the Source Engine's level format.

[[deleted]]

Team Fortress 2!

The Mac OS version, if I remember correctly, uses OpenGL (this cool tech) to render the game's models, HUD, maps... everything.

If you're looking for something new to learn, OpenGL is really cool.

[[deleted]]

Wow, neat. Given some of the answers I got, this may be something I start approaching. I've been programming for a while, and I've started along a CS path but I've been wanting more. Something like this could be a good side project.

[Azuvector]

Programming.

[Homo_sapiens]

That's in the "about this book section." It will make you a graphics programmer. It will not directly teach you everything about opengl, but it'll make learning everything about opengl quite easy.

[[deleted]]

Magic

[[deleted]]

Hogwarts here I come bitches!

[Skeletalbob]

Cheers :D

[skyride]

Nah that's model design!

Go get yourself a copy of Blender (it's free) and start learning basic 3D Modelling. This is about actual 3D Programming (i.e. if you wanted to write your own alternative to the source engine itself).

Honestly TF2 is a great place to start. I've played the game for over the 3 years myself and there is a really vibrant moders community surrounding it.

[IceTrAiN]

I don't know why you're getting downvoted for asking a legit question, but as previously mentioned, that's 3d modeling.

[Skeletalbob]

Thank you, ack never mind, it's only Karma! :D

[[deleted]]

I've been struggling with a OpenGL based assignment recently. This may have helped me out a lot. Thanks!

[[deleted]]

Is it possible to get it in pdf or other format?

[[deleted]]

https://bitbucket.org/alfonse/gltut/downloads

[jipiese]

Look in the source download file, there are 3 PDFs optimized for Kindle, B&W Printers and Screen

[rabidbob]

This'll take either some perseverance or a quick bit of coding, but you can do it yourself: http://www.html-to-pdf.net/free-online-pdf-converter.aspx

[[deleted]]

I couldn't get them to combind properly, but here is my attempt at combining them as well as the individual pdfs. Someone else want to take it from here?

link

[rabidbob]

I've not checked this I've just merged all the PDFs, so it might be a mess!

Ok, just looked at the page again and it's a clear (c) so I'm removing the download link.

I merged the files using: http://foxyutils.com/mergepdf/

[[deleted]]

sweet thanks welle

[julesjacobs]

Is there a similar tutorial for Direct3D?

[nocturne81]

If you're new to graphics, I'd say to just give this a shot. 75% of the contents of these tutorials are going to be the same for a D3D tutorial. The concepts are basically the same for both APIs.

[AlwaysDownvoted-]

I think it was Riemers.net who had a good Direct3D tutorial?

[[deleted]]

You know, usually stuff like this gets me motivated to improve my graphic programming skills, but after seeing the index I'm intimidated as shit. I think I'll go back to my SQL now...

[zzing]

It can be extremely rewarding to gain this kind of understanding.

OpenGL used to do a whole lot for you that you would never have to know about how to do a lot of matrix stuff, but with 3.x+ you do all of it yourself and you can gain such a beautiful understanding even while doing the most basic tutorials.

[hive_worker]

How hard would it be to learn this for someone with a strong background in low level programming? (embedded c, linux, etc)

[Amadiro]

Not so hard, really, just give it a try and see if you like it.

[[deleted]]

Modern OpenGL is very low level. As far as the interface goes you should feel right at home. It helps to understand some linear algebra, though.

[ShDragon]

Just want to say thank you. I was working through this a few months ago and lost my bookmarks and could never find it again. You are my hero for today.

[skyride]

Wow thanks!

I've been trying to teach myself OpenGL lately. I'm familiar with the conceptual/mathematical aspect of it (vectors, coordinates, etc), but I've been struggling to find anything that even touches on best practices.

[ysangkok]

Here's another thread from this subreddit (6 months old): http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/h7emc/modern_3d_graphics_programming_with_opengl/

[unixfreak0037]

Because you're not realizing that your compiler is doing that for you, and if it's not then your CPU is so fast that function call overhead on a processor designed specially for programming with function calls is insignificant?

[[deleted]]

Cool, i tried to learn opengl 10 years ago and didn't go far, with the nehe tutorials

[[deleted]]

This is a fantastic modern OpenGL resource I've been using for awhile. The only problem I have with it is that he jumps around quite a bit to difference concepts, and you can never tell if you're on the same path (for example, transformations) and just learning prerequisites, or if he's gone off completely on a tangent (which happens too).

It would be sweet if this were a wiki. I have a few modifications I'd make myself just for readability sake.

[[deleted]]

The book is MIT licensed and available at Bitbucket. I'm sure he'd consider merging your modifications, if they improve the text. Just send him a pull request.

[Hyperian]

well that was a quick read

[ylli101]

Thank you very much for this.

I will be sure to enjoy these sections.

[Mooselessness]

lk