I recently started writing a series of introductory tutorials about graphics programming with OpenGL, for the greek linux format magazine.
The articles are written for the complete begginer, who hasn’t had any previous exposure to graphics programming. However, familiarity with the C programming language is definitely required.
What I’m aiming for, is to thoroughly explain the underlying theory, in order to provide a stepping stone for someone who would like to eventually delve deeper into graphics algorithms, rather than just present raw examples for doing this and that with OpenGL.
In any case, the first article of the series will be published in the september-october issue of the greek linux format magazine, which should be available during the next few days. Any feedback, is greatly appreciated.
September 6, 2008 at 4:24 am
It would be great if you could publish the articles here too, after the next issue of the magazine is out.
September 17, 2008 at 12:04 am
Very nice introductory article. Makes many things clear for the beginner…
Also just as you said explaining the underlying theory is much better than writing
raw OpenGL examples for doing this and that…
If somebody wants to write good quality code he needs to understand
what he is doing and not just copy-paste premade algorithms…
Nice beginning and well done!!
Keep at it!
September 29, 2008 at 9:41 am
John, congratulations for your article. It’s really nice to see an OpenGL master giving programming lessons.
As a side note, I would like to point out the possibility of using terminology in greek whenever possible (and corresponding english term in parenthesis) – mixing languages even for a technical text does not look very nice. Of course there are cases where this is not effective but most of the terms have well defined greek names (for example: realtime, representation, vertex, etc.).
The knowledge presented seems quite “dense” for an OpenGL beginner but I guess this has to do with magazine publishing instructions.
Sorry for staying too much on details like these but you are a developer of high qualifications. ;)
September 29, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Thank you all for your comments. I just submitted the second article which
should be at the november-december issue of linux format.
First of all, yes I will upload the first article when the september-october
issue goes out of circulation, and I’ll post the link here.
I realize that the first article was a bit terse, a lot of information packed
in very little space. It came out like that due to the limited space
constraints, and I tried to make the second article easier to follow in that
respect.
Now, about the greek terms. The fact is that I don’t like translating terms. I
did call vertices “koryfes” most of the time, but I generally dislike most term
translations, so for instance I wouldn’t call realtime: “pragmatikou xronou”.
But thanks for your input anyway. I hope you enjoy the next one too :)
November 2, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I’ve just read the second article and I have to congratulate you John!
It was very explanatory especially in the part where you described lighting models etc…
Keep up the good work !!!