lilrooness

Right I know I'm answering my own question here but I wanted to share thses tutorials here for anyone else that had the same problem as me

 

This one is really good for the core engine stuff:

http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/introduction-to-isometric-engines-r744

 

This one is good for the actual graphics creation:

http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/isometric-tiles-r738

OBJ file format I find, is the easiest type of model file to parse. However you will have to make the reader yourself since there are no standard ones. This type of parsing can be difficult in C++ but there are lots of examples. Many of which you can pull straight down from the internet and use out of the box.

 

Remember to make sure that you include the vertex normal's when you export the file to obj format. I don't know about 3ds Max, but I know that in blender this is not done by default. You will need the vertex normal's for lighting in opengl.

 

If you were looking for a video tutorial on loading OBJ files in C++, here is a good one:

All of the tutorials in this series will be quite relevant for you as you are just getting started with opengl.

 

As for making the 3D chess board, I would first think about how you want each level to be viewed, for example:

- Do you want to view one level at a time ?

- Do you want a free camera, and you rotate around the stack of levels freely with the mouse, each level fading out so you can see the one below it ?

- Maybe you want to display each level in a different area of the screen

 

Be sure to experiment with different looks and feels to find the one that you like the most.

This doesn't necessarily limit you just to C++. If you were to go down the less coding rout and use a pre - made engine such as Unity3d you could still release for steam, xbox360 and windows, it makes it really easy to build for multiple platforms (even mobile devices).

The free version is good, but its limited in the rendering effects you can access, and the amount of standard assets that you get supplied with.

As you said you were thinking about not targeting the Xbox360, you could think about using Java. The Light Weight Java Game Library (lwjgl) allows you to handle rendering (opengl), input, and assets like sound, images, all with one library.
http://www.lwjgl.org/

Also, I don't know much about it at all, but if your looking for a 2D rendering system, you may want to check out Slick2D. This one is also a Java library.
http://www.slick2d.org/

Also if you choose to use C++, there is still a big choice as to what rendering engine you will use.
Good ones to start thinking about are DirectX (for windows and Xbox360 exclusively), Ogre3D and OpenGL.
(This list is not exhaustive, There are many more!)