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by gaustin 4405 days ago
I dabbled with the Red Book aeons ago, but never got very far with 3D programming. What would you suggest for learning OpenGL? Or is there some other tool you'd recommend learning?
4 comments

This is the list I typically see given to newbies (on freenode ##OpenGL, and /r/opengl) wanting to learn modern OpenGL.

1. Arcsynthesis's gltut (http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/) is good and reasonably thorough. He explains things well but not always in the order you'd like him to. At the end you will probably know enough to be able to figure out the rest on your own as you need.

2. http://open.gl/ is good but somewhat short. It also goes in depth into creating/initializing a context with various APIS (SDL, SFML, GLFW, ...). More of a good starting point than a complete guide.

3. http://ogldev.atspace.co.uk/ has a lot of good tutorials on how to do more advanced techniques, as well as many beginner level tutorials. I've never gone through them so I can't speak to their quality, but I've heard good things.

4. http://www.lighthouse3d.com/tutorials/glsl-core-tutorial/ is also good, but focused on the shading language.

See /r/opengl and freenode's ##OpenGL channel for more. Both those places are fairly newbie friendly (/r/opengl moreso than ##OpenGL, but as long as you actually know your language of choice they're nice), so feel free to ask questions.

For OpenGL 1.2 there was nothing better than http://nehe.gamedev.net/ (e.g. http://nehe.gamedev.net/tutorial/lessons_01__05/22004/), but I don't know if something similar exists for modern OpenGL.
I remember this link being posted recently and since I have some interest in looking into this area as well, it stuck with me (and a browser tab ;) While it's not a tutorial or anything, the article addresses the question "where do I start?" and mentions (not only in the title) "modern OpenGL" specifically.

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/771225/Learning-Modern-O...

I'd recommend starting with WebGL. It's the same API minus the cruft. You can use it nearly anywhere.

Here's some tutorials I wrote to hopefully make it clear how things work

http://games.greggman.com/game/webgl-fundamentals/

Everything you learn there will be directly applicable to C OpenGL