OpenGL(R) Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL(R), Version 1.4

If you feel the need to know,this is the book for you to understand raphic programming language.Couple with the extesions handbok it is a complete coursework for graphics programming to be used anywhere visual manipulation and creatin is needed.

This is a concise, easy to read tutorial and reference for OpenGL programmers. The examples are easy to reuse and short enough that they don't bog you down in irrelevant details. The book is well organized. You can read it cover to cover or just skip right to the topic that you're interested in. I found the section on the GLU tessellator invaluable. The chapters on viewing and lighting are the easiest to follow discussions of these topics that I've ever read. Programmers with no previous graphics experience will be able to follow this book and become productive with basic OpenGL operations. My only complaint is that it's not longer. It gives you enough information to get started and complete most tasks but won't answer your very specific questions. But there's plenty of information elsewhere on more advanced topics.

When learning computer graphics, theory relies upon some sort of actual rendering environment to make life a lot easier for the programmer. This text helps to alleviate these problems by making the OpenGL architecture available in a structured way. The most positive aspects of the text are its pure devotion to teaching OpenGL as well as its copious, yet succinct examples provided for the presented topics. The text does not proclaim to be a full text for teaching computer graphics. It claims to be a guide to programming using OpenGL. It completely fulfills that claim. While it does not treat every aspect of OpenGL, the text presents the major topics which are important in writing programs that will render their 3D graphics using OpenGL. It progresses from simple topics through more advanced topics in a seemless way and also is noted in such a way that it functions as an excellent reference when memory alone can not remember syntax for rendering functions. The code provided with the book provides examples of topics that are presented but do not overwhelm the reader. It is an awful thing to buy a book and have it be predominantly code. Everything presented is succinct, expressing only the newly presented facets of OpenGL. This is grand when one wants to see how a given new topic may be implemented. It would probably be best to view this text as an ancillary text for learning computer graphics. It is important to remember that the mathematics and algorithms necessary for thorough graphics simulation are of prime importance. However, after the mathematics and algorithms are known, one must know how to perform the operations necessary to render their worlds in the context of a 3D rendering library. This book allows for learning that for the OpenGL rendering architecture.

I've been working with graphics for about 5 years, using an abstracted library. When I had to take over the library, this book provided me an excellent introduction to the use of OpenGL. This book is very good for learning how to use OpenGL, and specific commands, and is presented in a relatively logical order. I keep a copy of this on my bookshelf next to a copy of the OpenGL Super Bible, which is a little better as a pure reference guide. Between the two (and MSDN) I can figure out pretty much any problem, one way or another.

I've bought this book from here because out here in the netherlands it's about $ 44 US more.I'm know at the lightning chapter, and it's quite easy to follow(as 14 year old dutch boy).To bad i don't understand all the mathematic things but that's not really nescary if your not using light.So i recomment this book to evry beginning opengl programmer.