Questions about complete OpenGL training DVDs

Hey all, after running in circles for a long time over minuscule openGL problems (it has been more than just texture loading), I started searching for complete OpenGL training DVDs. I found http://www.gametutorials.com/, but they don’t use GLUT and my CG class in the fall uses GLUT, so no go.

I know 3D Buzz has one with GLUT, but their website is down temporarily (I am cursed!)

Are there any other companies with extensive training videos on openGL?

http://videotutorialsrock.com/

Keep in mind that no-one uses GLUT and fixed-function. Things that are used nowadays are:

  • Shaders (C-like code to calculate of color and vertex transformation in the way you want). The way to color your pixels and calculate lights is no longer handled by OpenGL, but by your own shader-code.
  • VBOs (vertex buffer objects - contains vertex data),
  • FBOs (frame buffer objects - render to 1 to 8 textures at once),
  • S3TC (compressed DDS textures instead of huge RGBA8)
  • FreeGLUT and even newer toolkits to do cross-platform development.

An example of a current-gen framework (though not cross-platform) is at http://www.humus.name/ - you can see what modern opengl code looks like there.

Hmm, I’ve never seen an openGL tutorial that uses freeGLUT… do people just say GLUT even when its freeGLUT, is it backwards compatible?

Humus doesn’t seem to have any openGL stuff past 2005, am I missing something on their website?

Sigh, GLUT and fixed-function programming are really ancient these days… the problem for me is that I want to have some reference code that runs that I can mess around with. I found a nice .exe from 3dshaders.com. It has a brick shader, and I added per-pixel fog to it on my own :smiley: I made that topic on loading images, because I wanted to eventually get to environment mapping with GLSL. Unfortunately, current and up to date openGL tutorials seem very rare :frowning:

freeGLUT API is very similar to the GLUT one. I have not used it enough myself to see the differences. :slight_smile: So you can follow GLUT tutorial and using the FreeGLUT API.
FreeGLUT is recommended just because it is still maintained unlike GLUT.

I understand that Humus page is not modern html :wink: but you have a “3D” section where you can find many examples, including this year.

I am glad to hear that freeGLUT and GLUT are very similar, causing less headaches with learning from tutorials.

Humus has some recent and impressive stuff, but it is all in DX10 and I have to learn openGL :frowning:

I cannot believe 3D Buzz’s website is still down for maintenance. I desperatly want to see their tutorials and see if they are worth buying (Basically, if they compile on my VS2008 or VS2005, they are golden to me). Does anyone know if they’ve been down for a while? It says they should be back up in 24 hours, and it has been about 24 hours…

Arf, yes DirectX 10 example codes won’t help much. You can also check out the nvidia developers site:

http://developer.nvidia.com/page/documentation.html

there are plenty of code examples for openGL and direct3d that may interest you.

Thanks, they do have a lot of cool opengl demos. They all look very advanced though, I should probably work my way up to them right?