People will give you all kinds of varying advice. I myself started by buying a book on OpenGL. I'm sure a lot of people will argue that the best way to learn is by writing a software rasterizer and making all parts yourself. I personally disagree with this approach mainly because I found that it's easier to learn the concepts when your using something like GL. I probably would have never started programming 3D stuff if I had to write the rasterizer simply because I would have gotten too discouraged.

After you have created a GL engine, though, you should go back and write a software rasterizer since software rendering still is very important. Besides that, you'll learn a great deal from it.

*note* rasterizer = renderer

My 2C

--TheGoop

OK, here it goes.
I, like every other aspiring game programmer out there wants to make a 3d engine, there is only one proble, i have no clue where to start. here is ,my goal for the first version of the engine, a big box, which you can walk around inside of, and dynamically change the view with your mouse(mouselook) from there i will work to add all features, and make a dynamic level loader, and all that good stuff, but my question is how would i go about doing the above thing? I just need this a s a good place to start, please give me some ideas how to do this.

THANX,
Nomad

I think TheGoop's suggestion is a good one. I did something similar myself, building a rasterizer and then a 3D engine using OpenGL to handle things one level below whatever I was working on learning (i.e. letting it draw pixel while I was doing lines, then lines while I did polys, etc.). Learning low-level rendering is important, but you don't REALLY need to learn it before building a 3D engine.

Anyway, I think what you need is a good book on 3D graphics. Look in the Game and Graphics section of our book reviews for some suggestions. I just got 3D Game Programming with C++ for review, and it may be a good place to start.

There are also a number of introductory 3D tutorials in our reference section, so check those out too.

- Dave