OpenGL: A Primer

I am taking a Computer Graphics 3D class at a Dutch University, and this book is part of our teaching method. The book is a great intro on OpenGL (with a lot of C++ examples). It's a perfect start for beginners in 3D graphics. You'll get an basic understanding of all aspects of OpenGL and its capabilities. Along with the Redbook (free online OpenGL documentation) you should be able to learn OpenGL quickly in a matter of weeks.

This book provides a very good introduction to programming in OpenGL. However it might help to have some theoretical background in computer graphics for some of the concepts. I read it in conjunction with a computer graphics course and it was very useful and complementary to what was covered in that course. However I also found a lot of typos and bugs in this book. They may have been fixed in the second edition but were very annoying. I almost feel like they added these typos/bugs in on purpose to challenge the reader.

This book is a great little reference book to get started in using openGL. Its small size keeps it as a handy reference beside the keyboard. The function calls are placed in their own highlighted boxes complete with descriptions, to make looking up syntax less painful. The choice to use GLUT for the windows system is excellent since it allows programs to run fairly consistent on Windows, Linux, and Mac. It also grealy simplifies the code examples and allows focus onto the important openGL calls. For serious development, learning a more sophisticated windowing API is neccessary, but to master the fundamentals of openGL, this book will get you there.

I am a programmer who needs to implement some graphics in an application. Nothing really serious, but beyond the functions of Win32 API. So naturally I turned to OpenGL, but at first a was little turned off by its complexity (well, so I thought). I ended up buying this book, and also the "red book" (OpenGL Programming Guide). OpenGL Primer is a great book to get a general overview and fast hands on experience. I was amazed how easy it actually is to get a basic OpenGL program up and running. When I am interested in more in depth knowledge on a subject, I turn to the red book.Again I can recommend this to every beginner on this subject. Although on the cover it states "for programmers with background in computer graphics", I can say its easy to understand even if you have next to no prior knowledge, like me.enjoy.

I bought this book recently as a supplement to a computer graphics class that I am currently taking at Ohio State University. While this book is not an in-depth coverage of OpenGL or computer graphics, it does provide clear and concise explanations of OpenGL and GLUT functions necessary for the novice. I found it to be well organized and full of useful examples of code. The author states that it is meant as a companion book to his textbook on OpenGL. It is easy to see that this is the case, in that certain expectations exist in order to fully appreciate the book. For example, the book does not cover the transformation matrices which form the bases for the transformation functions. It glosses over the coordinate transformations as well. In order to focus on how to achieve a desired effect the Primer concerns itself more with demonstating different functions and their effects rather than explaining how the functions achieve the things they do.Still, I bought the book knowing this was the case. It is an excellent companion to a more thorough text. I am using Hill's Computer Graphics Using OpenGL, Second Edition. Naturally, for a complete guide to OpenGL, I recommend the Red Book, OpenGL Programming Guide currently in it's Third Edition.