JimmyRose

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!