Where to start learning OpenGL?

[Paulius]

Getting started forum seemed to be the best place for such a question. I never used OpenGL and am a little confused, there seem to be a lot of examples of all kinds of stuff done with OpenGL and Delphi, but none seem to cover it?¢_Ts basics. I?¢_Tm looking for theoretical stuff about it and can?¢_Tt find any which wouldn?¢_Tt have C code, which I don?¢_Tt really want to look into.

[Eriken]

I'm not sure if you've been to NeHe's pages on Gamedev?

There most things are covered from scratch, but the code is in C. The positive part being that in the end of the tutorials there is a few volunteers who have ported the code to various languages, including Delphi.

Edit: Pretty smart to add the url I guess: http://nehe.gamedev.net
_____
Eriken

[Paulius]

Thanks, it seems to have the info i'm looking for. I saw NeHe's pages once, but got scared of C code and ran away

[BlueCat]

Yes NeHe's the one that got me started, just do each tutorial one at a time and you'll have no problems

[TheLion]

Jan Horns website (now maintained by McClaw) is also a good place to start (especially in combination with NEHE's website)

www.sulaco.co.za

[BlueCat]

And don't forget turbo and delphigamer of course, links at the bottom of every page here

[Alimonster]

I'm going to go against the grain slightly. Nehe's tutorials are okay, but I wouldn't rate them as especially good. Too much clutter, too much code versus explanation (we can get the code at the end of the article -- why include so much of it there, though he has improved it a little recently), and some of the explanation is wooly. Many of the comments for the code are totally inane and I don't think that his code is especially strong.

Still, at least there are a lot of tutorials.

I know that the above may annoy some people and for that I apologise, but it's how I see it. NeHe is a good reference, but not good tutorials. I personally rate gametutorials.com's style higher, since it's more honest (sod the HTML, just comment the code). It's what NeHe does but without the pretence and it also means that they can get onto damned interesting examples. I also prefer the structure versus NeHe, though again, it could be a bit stronger (I forget why - just a gut feeling).

Perhaps the OpenGL books would be a good start (the red and blue ones IIRC -- google for them to find 'em w/ for example "opengl red book", since I don't have a link handy). Sulaco also has some nice examples, as noted before. I remember seeing good, small examples sitting on Delphi3d's site: http://www.delphi3d.net/listfiles.php?category=2 ("ogldemos.zip", note that you need a file called "fgl.pas", I think -- check the forums there, since I posted its contents).

But yeah, take a look through NeHe. It'll teach you bad coding habits but you can unlearn them later.

[Darhazer]

Imho the best book for learning OpenGL is red book. After reading it (and taking some time for practise) you can continue with NeHe tutorials - they are good but they are not for novices

[Traveler]

Note, this topic is over 2 years old.

[Darhazer]

Note, this topic is over 2 years old.

Ooops, sorry
I looked at the day ant month, not the year