From the high resolution of graphics that I have seen used in OpenGL applications, it seems that there have to be 3D drawing packages that interface as a front end.
What are some 3d graphics formats or drawing packages that can be used to generate graphics that are directly readable by OpenGL?
I am in the planning stages of this project and am trying to figure out what tools I will need. I am reading a couple OpenGL books but have not done any coding yet, so my questions are probably simplistic, but I have not been able to find the answers anywhere else.
OpenGL interprets drawing commands.
3D file formats are not made of lists of drawing commands.
They only contain lists of geometric primitives (vertices and their attributes, triangles and their attributes,…).
In any case you will need some code to read file data and convert it to the appropriate drawing commands you will need. Some libraries can help you to read a number of file formats.
Choose a file format that will be able to contain all the data you need.
For simplest stuff, .obj is enough. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obj