Lesson Index

The lessons on this page may contain mistakes, poor commenting, and should not be considered the best resource to learn OpenGL from. What you do with the code is up to you. I am merely trying to make the learning process a little easier for those people new to OpenGL. If you are serious about learning OpenGL, you should spend the money and invest in the following books: Red Book Version 1.4 (4th ed.): 0321173481, Blue Book Version 1.4 (4th ed.): 032117383X, Orange Book Version 1.4 (Shading Language): 0321197895. Although they can be difficult for the new OpenGL programmer to understand, they are by far the best books written on the subject of OpenGL. Another book I would recommend is the OpenGL Superbible, although opinions vary. It is also important that you have a solid understanding of the language you plan to use. Although I do comment the non-GL lines, I am self-taught, and may not always write proper or even good code. It's up to you to take what you have learned from this site and apply it to projects of your own. Play around with the code, read books, ask me questions if need be. Once you have surpassed the code on this site or even before, check out some of the more professional sites such as OpenGL.org. Also be sure to visit the many OpenGL links on my page. Each site I link to is an incredible asset to the OpenGL community. Most of these sites are run by talented individuals that not only know their GL, they also program a lot better than I do. Please keep all of this in mind while browsing my site. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer! One final note, if you see code that you feel is similar to someone else's code, please contact me. I assure you, any code I borrow from or learn from either comes from the MSDN or from sites created to help teach people in a similar way that my site teaches GL. I never intentionally take code, and never would without giving the proper person credit. There may be instances where I get code from a free site not knowing that site took it from someone else, so if that happens, please contact me. I will either rewrite the code, or remove it from my program. Most the code should be original however, I only borrow when I absolutely have no idea how to accomplish something, and even then I make sure I understand the code before I decide to include it in my program. If you spot mistakes in any of the lessons, no matter how tiny the mistake may be, please let me know. One important thing to note about my base code is that it was written in 1997. It has undergone many changes, and it is definitely not borrowed from any other sites. It will more than likely be altered in the future. If I am not the one that modifies it, the person responsible for the changes will be credited.

Flag Effect (Waving Texture): This tutorial code brought to you by Bosco. The same guy that created the totally cool mini demo called worthless. He enjoyed everyones reaction to his demo, and decided to go one step further and explain how he does the cool effect at the end of his demo. This tutorial builds on the code from lesson 6. By the end of the tutorial you should be able to bend fold and manipulate textures of your own. It's definitely a nice effect, and alot better than flat non moving textures. If you enjoy the tutorial, please email bosco and let him know.  Display Lists: Want to know how to speed up you OpenGL programs? Tired of writing lots of code every time you want to put an object on the screen? If so, this tutorial is definitely for you. Learn how to use OpenGL display lists. Prebuild objects and display them on the screen with just one line of code. Speed up your programs by using precompiled objects in your programs. Stop writing the same code over and over. Let display lists do all the work for you! In this tutorial we'll build the Q-Bert pyramids using just a few lines of code thanks to display lists.  Bitmap Fonts: I think the question I get asked most often in email is "how can I display text on the screen using OpenGL?". You could always texture map text onto your screen. Of course you have very little control over the text, and unless you're good at blending, the text usually ends up mixing with the images on the screen. If you'd like an easy way to write the text you want anywhere you want on the screen in any color you want, using any of your computers built in fonts, then this tutorial is definitely for you. Bitmaps font's are 2D scalable fonts, they can not be rotated. They always face forward.  Outline Fonts: Bitmap fonts not good enough? Do you need control over where the fonts are on the Z axis? Do you need 3D fonts (fonts with actual depth)? Do you need wireframe fonts? If so, Outline fonts are the perfect solution. You can move them along the Z axis, and they resize. You can spin them around on an axis (something you can't do with bitmap fonts), and because proper normals are generated for each character, they can be lit up with lighting. You can build Outline fonts using any of the fonts installed on your computer. Definitely a nice font to use in games and demos.  Texture Mapped Outline Fonts: Hopefully my last font tutorial {grin}. This time we learn a quick and fairly nice looking way to texture map fonts, and any other 3D object on your screen. By playing around with the code, you can create some pretty cool special effects, Everything from normal texture mapped object to sphere mapped objects. In case you don't know... Sphere mapping creates a metalic looking object that reflects anything from a pattern to a picture.

I am not a guru programmer. I am an average programmer, learning new things about OpenGL every day. I do not claim to know everything. I do not guarantee my code is bug free. I have made every effort humanly possible to eliminate all bugs but this is not always an easy task. Please keep this in mind while going through the lessons! Back To NeHe Productions!