Dear OpenGL experts: I have just finished RedBook by Mason Woo et.al. and I would like to move on! I was left really unsatisfied by the way redbook explains Reading/Writing Pixels to memory and other stuff like textures, picking, selection, buffers ... Is there something really nice you have to suggest me so I can easily learn and understand all those aspects I descibed above plus: creating animations??? I am mostly working under Linux! Thanks you all! P.S. What about OpenGL SuperBible (there are some really negative comments for Linux Users in www.amazon.com)

archondas,

http://www.magic-software.com

I would recommend picking up a copy of 3D Game Engine Design by David H. Eberly. It is not light reading though and contains a LOT of math. He does cover most of the areas that are necessary to create a game engine however and does so in detail unlike most books. His follow on book,3D Game Engine Architecture, was even more helpful to me even though its not as detail/math heavy as the first book. Rather it is more on the overall structure / blending of all of the parts in order to create the engine. You can think of the two as micro engine design vs macro engine design. The books are concept oriented so what you do is read them to learn the concept behind them and then with the RedBook you decide how to implement them.

Anyway, I really liked the books and suggest them to most of the folks I talk to.

Quote: Original post by archondas
P.S.
What about OpenGL SuperBible (there are some really negative comments
for Linux Users in www.amazon.com)

The OpenGL SuperBible is not that bad of a book, I have the 2nd edition of this book and I think that overall it is a very good book, I would recomend getting it.

I didn't really find anything wrong with the book, however I'm a Windows user and although the operating systems may be different the API is still all the same, most of the book its not really oriented towards any particular platform since it uses the GLUT Toolkit through quite a bit of the book, but there are a few chapters in the book that are oreinted towards the Windows platform.

So with that said; I think that even though you're a Linux user its still a book worth reading, even if I was a Linux user I still would've read it.

But like I said, I have the 2nd edition, so the 3rd edition may differ some.

Hope this helps some

I recently got the third edition of the superbible, and one of its new features is to make sure that almost all of it is cross-platform. Almost eveything uses standard GLUT code, but of the sections that do not, (the windowing and messaging sections), there are 3 seperate chapters, one that covers window creation and messaging under linux, windows, and mac. However, I am not a linux developer (although I would like to be), so I am unqualified to judge the quality of the linux-specific code, but it IS there, and seemed to be covered in as much detail (if not more) than the windows code. I think the superbible is an excellent resource myself.

Just my two cents.

I have the OpenGL Superbible, Opengl Game Programming, OpenGL extensions and the Red Book. The Red Book has by far been the most informative. When I wanted to get more indepth on a subject I would check my other books and if they didn't have the info I would just use google, news groups and this forum.

This method has cost me quite a bit of time lost in writing engines that aren't designed very well. I have however, learned through trial and error some good design decisions and hopefully I'll be able to show off my new engine soon.

To answer your question directly, think about how to solve a problem and then try and use your knowledge of programming, opengl etc to make it work. If you can't get it working use another resource like this forum or google. If you just read examples then you're only learning one person's solution (I'm not saying you are, it's just a general comment).

Good luck.