Hello,

I've been wanting to start OpenGL for quite a while now and I've been searching for the best place to start.

I recently purchased OpenGL Programming Guide 5th Edition aka The Red Book which covers OpenGL 2.0, but recently I was told that I was learning depreciated code and I would be wise to find a more recent book or tutorial on OpenGL. I personally loved The Red Book, it didn't take me long to get things on the screen, it was easy to read, and I understood everything while I was breezing through the book.

So my questions start:

Would I gain anything from reading The Red Book? or Would I just be shooting myself in the foot?

If learning from The Red Book is a bad idea is there anything comparable, as far as text books?

What's the ideal API to use while "LEARNING" OpenGL?

There are a few tutorials online I've been reading one of them seem to be rather popular: http://www.opengl-tutorial.org/

It was recommended on NeHe website. I was going to use it but when reading the tutorials it is advertise as using "Easy C++" and I don't want to be protected from learning something that may be easy from me but is left out to be more friendly to those who may not understand C++.

To those who have used it or have read it, would you recommend it?

Another website that seems to be very popular and is also organize very much like a text book, is http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/index.html

Reading the introductory I was very convinced this was the best path for me learning OpenGL and Modern Graphics Programming. But it was difficult for me to get started I was unable to get Premake 4 to work and there seems to be little to no real walkthrough on how to use it. I'm not an expert on using the command line but it was a tutorial I really wanted to get started on.

To those who have used it or have read it, would you recommend it?

Can anyone walk me through using Premake 4? I tried the walkthrough on the website and I get errors.

As far as text books go OpenGL Shading Language 3rd Edition seems to be a highly rated book on current OpenGL.

Is this book comparable to The Red Book?

I hate to post questions that may have already been answered but I've been searching and I was unable to find answers to my questions.

Thanks for any help!

http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/ is really good and the 4th edition of the OpenGL super bible has been declared better then previous and the most recent one, but it is a tad older, but it gets you all the valuable knowledge.

Check out also:

http://www.glprogramming.com/red/

This lecture is still up. Worth check out http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15462-f10/www/

http://openglbook.com/the-book/

Before you do this, make sure you have at least a decent/firm understanding of 3D mathematics. I am currently reading http://www.amazon.com/Interactive-Computer-Graphics-Top-Down-Shader-Based/dp/0132545233 to get some deep knowledge before i completely dive into OpenGL

The arcsynthesis building instructions work. Just follow them closely and don't blindly jump over the pages. And thinking about it, its pretty much how you should deal with the rest of the book.

I have no doubt that his instructions work, one reason I wanted to follow his tutorials is because of his explanation of whom the tutorials were targeted for.

I can't get Premake 4 to work or to tell you the truth I'm really confused on how to use it. If someone could fully explain how to get it setup I have no qualms that I'll be able to breeze through the tutorials.