OpenGL Superbible: Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference

I started with the first of second edition and it was extremely useful then. The graphics and GPU hardware keeps changing so you have to keep getting the next edition. There is always something useful in the next edition.

I own every edition of this excellent book. One significant change in this edition that readers should be aware of is the complete abandonment of OpenGL on Apple's platform. From the preface of the book: "Gone is official support for the Apple Mac platform. Almost all of the new content in this edition requires features introduced with OpenGL 4.4 or 4.5, or recent OpenGL extensions -- none of which were supported by OS X at the time of writing. There is no expectation that Apple will further invest in its OpenGL implementation, so we encourage our readers to move away from the platform." To be fair, the current state of OpenGL on the Mac is poor. Mavericks supports OpenGL 4.1, which is now 5 years old (2010). Apple has announced that the future of graphics development on Apple devices will be "Metal", which is an Apple-proprietary low level hardware interface. This is an unfortunate development for those wanting to target multiple platforms, which is a primary motivation for using OpenGL. If you want to develop for the Mac, you should pick up a previous edition of this excellent book, probably 6th or even 5th edition. 7th ed: OpenGL 4.5 6th ed: OpenGL 4.3 5th ed: OpenGL 3.3 4th ed: OpenGL 2.1 3rd ed: OpenGL 2.0 and 1.5 2nd ed: OpenGL 1.2, 1.1

A very great introduction to OpenGL for amateur game programmers.

Sad to see so many authors with strong professional skills but no teaching talent. I've got "OpenGL Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, Version 4.5 with SPIR-V (9th Edition)" OpenGL Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, Version 4.5 with SPIR-V (9th Edition) , "OpenGL 4 Shading Language Cookbook - Second Edition" OpenGL 4 Shading Language Cookbook - Second Edition , and "OpenGL Superbible: Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference (7th Edition) 7th Edition" OpenGL Superbible: Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference (7th Edition) but those books are far away from tutorial or guide qualification. Fortunately, there is help around the web. Try "ogldev.atspace.co.uk". You get there step by step all you need from starting with a bare bone fully functional main OpenGL program, doing nothing else but opening an empty window: #include <GL/freeglut.h> static void RenderSceneCB() { glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); glutSwapBuffers(); } static void InitializeGlutCallbacks() { glutDisplayFunc(RenderSceneCB); } int main(int argc, char** argv) { glutInit(&argc, argv); glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_DOUBLE|GLUT_RGBA); glutInitWindowSize(1024, 768); glutInitWindowPosition(100, 100); glutCreateWindow("Tutorial 01"); InitializeGlutCallbacks(); glClearColor(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); glutMainLoop(); return 0; } Now one by one all the GLSL nuts and bolts are added in place, with full code and detailed explanations. I would highly recommend the books that I acquired to go in parallel with this website. Please let me know if you get your hands on some other useful resources that qualifies as guide or tutorial. All The Best Adi

Arrived earlier than expected. Excellent book for purpose ordered to self teach.

After a lot more attempting to use this book and pulling my hair out, I am reducing my rating to one star. It would be great if there were some way to determine which code samples go along with which part of the book. It's over 800 pages long, then the zipfile has 85 examples, and you're supposed to figure out on your own how they match up. The names don't have chapters or pages or anything like that in them. They look like they were named in DOS, like they were afraid of running out of characters. Good luck finding which example relates to using an attribute in a vertex shader, for example. There are also huge and super-important steps skipped while explaining a process. For example there's a ton of detailed step-by-step on how to load a texture, put it in memory, tell OpenGL all about what it is and all of its properties, and how the shader renders this onto a face. But then it completely skips over how to tell GL to actually send the texture to the shader, making all of this information 100% useless because my shader just sits there with no way to reach the texture. So then I spend hours and hours googling trying to find code samples because the 800 page book I paid a fortune for doesn't contain this simple but absolutely vital bit of information. The same thing happened with rendering a triangle in the first place. They seem to assume that "how to tell GL what to render and not to render" is knowledge we're all born with. Also, there are several parts where it would have been extremely useful to have a diagram showing the layout of things like the VAO, what attrib indices are, how they relate/connect with buffers, etc. I had to work it all out by hand on a white board to figure out what was going on. I still am trying to figure out GL's terminology and this book is no help at all. How does GL even know what buffer or array or object a command is being applied to, for example when I'm calling vertexattribpopinters or enablevertexattribarray. If I have 50 VAOs, which of them does this apply to? The VAO is not among the parameters, so how does it decide which VAO's vertexarray just got enabled? The book offers nothing about this, apparently you're already supposed to know this. The book seems to contain a lot of information, but it goes extremely deep in some aspects and completely skips over many necessary things.

Very handy book. Code is open source and runs on Linux Mint!

I bought this book years ago when I had no experience with opengl or graphics programing and completely failed getting anywhere with it. Now that I have some experience with both this book has been shockingly readable and informative.

Uses modern OpenGL without mixing it with old concepts so much more helpful than online texts. This is high quality code explained by experts. The book is trustworthy and precise, although it is not a beginner text.

Really comprehensive reference! If you are an OpenGL developer I highly recommend you to have it.

Con este libro podrás aprender las bases de OpenGL de forma fácil y rápida. Empieza explicando conceptos básicos necesarios para comprender que es necesario para el uso de esta librería. Además de la teoría, trae snippets de código para poner en práctica estos conceptos. Tiene página web con todos los ejemplos codificados. La curva de aprendizaje se hace amena. 100% Recomendable para iniciarse y asentar conceptos.

Ce livre s'adresse à des débutants en OpenGL (et plus précisément des débutants en Shading Language) mais pas à des débutants en programmation. Les exemples fournis (téléchargeables sur internet) étant écrits en C++, la connaissance de ce langage ainsi que de la programmation orientée objet sont indispensables si on souhaite réussir à les faire tourner. En effet, certains de ces exemples on nécessité, pour ma part, quelques ajustements, voir corrections. C'est un livre très complet. Les explications sont le plus souvent très claires et on ne peut qu'apprendre énormément lorsqu'on débute en OpenGL. On regrettera cependant que le lien entre les chapitres et les exemples ne soit pas toujours évident. J'ai pour ma part procédé par élimination et j'ai pu ainsi raccroché chacun des exemples à un paragraphe du livre. En conclusion, un livre très intéressant, mais qui nécessite un investissement en temps ainsi qu'un petit effort intellectuel pour comprendre les différentes méthodes et concepts abordés.