Modern OpenGL programming

Abstract

OpenGL is the most widely available library for creating interactive computer graphics applications across all major computer operating systems. Its uses span from creating applications for scientific visualizations to computer-aided design and interactive gaming and entertainment. With each new version, its capabilities reveal the most up-to-date features of modern graphics hardware. This course provides an accelerated introduction to programming OpenGL, emphasizing the most modern methods for using the library. OpenGL has undergone numerous updates in recent years which have fundamentally changed how programmers interact with the application programming interface (API), and the skills required for being an effective OpenGL programmer. The most notable of those changes was the introduction of shader-based rendering. Introduced into the API many years ago, shader-based rendering has expanded to subsume almost all functionality in OpenGL. An attendee of the course will be introduced to each of the shader stages in OpenGL, along with methods for specifying data to be used in rendering with OpenGL. While there have been numerous courses on OpenGL in the past, the recent sequence of revisions to the API -- culminating in OpenGL version 4.1 -- have provided a wealth of new functionality and features to create ever-richer content. This course builds from demonstrating the use of the most fundamental shader-based OpenGL pipeline, to introducing all of the latest shader stages.