OpenGL books?
Author
Hi all,
After reading the excellent OpenGL Game Programming book from Prima I was wondering what to buy next? What is the difference between the OpenGL Red and Blue book? Should I buy both, or do they cover the same? What about the OpenGL Superbible? Thanks in advance!
Hi,
I suggest the superbible rather than the blue book.
I haven''t seen the blue book. IMHO superbible is very good. Red book is very good too.
I suggest you get superbible and red book both.
I suggest the superbible rather than the blue book.
I haven''t seen the blue book. IMHO superbible is very good. Red book is very good too.
I suggest you get superbible and red book both.
I''d say it depends upon how comfortable you are with programming in general and 3D programming in specific at this point.
If you already feel pretty comfortable, but just need to know the specifics of how OpenGL does things, get the Red Book for sure. Its the undisptued king of reference materials for OpenGL.
If you are still coming up to speed on the hows and whys of 3D you''d be better off with the superbible or some other similar book because they focus more on explaining general concepts -- the Red Book assumes you already know the ins and outs of 3D.
If you already feel pretty comfortable, but just need to know the specifics of how OpenGL does things, get the Red Book for sure. Its the undisptued king of reference materials for OpenGL.
If you are still coming up to speed on the hows and whys of 3D you''d be better off with the superbible or some other similar book because they focus more on explaining general concepts -- the Red Book assumes you already know the ins and outs of 3D.
Going with the Superbible would be like going in reverse after OGL Game Programming. The Red Book would probably be better now that you have an understanding of OGL.
I''d say if you already read a book about OpenGL then stop reading books and start writing OpenGL programs. The blue book is a alphabetical reference of all the OpenGL functions. One tutorial book ought to be good enough; I would get the blue book if I were you and start coding.
Grady''s right. If you''ve read our book, you probably don''t need any other OGL books. There''s really nothing in the Superbible that we don''t cover, and the Red Book just goes more in depth than we do, and covers a couple of things that we don''t (which aren''t used much in games anyway). Start coding things. If there are things you don''t know how to do, look around for tutorials, look things up in MSDN - hell, even the OpenGL spec is a good resource once you have the basics down.
Only get the other books if you feel like that OpenGL Game Programming didn''t cover a section well enough, you want to know more, and you don''t want to search for tutorials. I have all 3 (Super Bible, Red Book, and OpenGL Game Programing) and I must say that OpenGL Game Programming is by far the best. None of the other books taught me how to do a shadow volume (haven''t actually done it yet), how to do multitexturing, how to load 3d models, and none of them ever gave me a complete engine to get inspiration from. Plus, it convers all the topics (nearly all of them, selection is one thing it doesn''t cover) that the other books have. I say, just start programming.
I have the red book, it kicks mucho ass. (We are talking about the official OpenGl Programming Guide right?)
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