Hi guys.
I decided that after finishing my first libgdx game, i will try to learn how OPENGL do stuff.
Im pretending to buy this book : http://www.amazon.com/OpenGL-SuperBible-Comprehensive-Tutorial-Reference/dp/0321902947
I was wondering if i can use lwjgl and this book to learn. I mean, this book isnt one that you will just read… you need study it and train.
So what you guys think? Or you recommend another book? I want a full book.
The Super Bible is good. What I don’t like is that their examples use a lot of pre-written code without explaining much about them. Then again, I see a lot of OpenGL books do that.
Do you recommend any other book? I searched in Amazon, and this one seemed preety well rated.But your opinion scared me now 
, what should i do ? 
As I said, it’s a good book. It does a lot of explaining. My only issue was the helper classes that it relied on. All you have to do is look in the helper classes, build your own in Java, and then you are good to go.
I have the superbible, and to be honest with you I barely ever use it. The author uses his own framework, and so you can’t follow along in his examples. I do use it for referencing sometimes, though, and other stuff like learning about different buffer types. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who is new to OpenGL.
I see… What book should i go with then?
What about this one : http://www.amazon.com/OpenGL-Programming-Guide-Official-Learning/dp/0321773039/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386278027&sr=8-1&keywords=openGL
I would actually go with the SuperBible (I like it because it explains things very well) and arcsynthesis. Arcsynthesis goes very in-depth with the basics, and that’s why I like it (a Java port is located here, credits to ra4king).
Those two books made me understand the OpenGL API, so that’s the reason why I recommend them.
I learned OpenGL mainly from hundreds of Google searches, stackoverflow.com and theCodingUniverse on YouTube. I have yet to find a really good book yet besides the one ra4king ported over.
Another good resource is the ##OpenGL channel on the Freenode IRC server. They have GL experts in there, notably glYoda who is an actual GL driver dev for one of the big GPU companies. You can ask your questions there, but of course, nobody will do any work/coding for you.
I see, but i want to know the theory as well…
So i guess i will go with the super bible… if i can at least absorb 40%, im already happy.
G’day Andre,
I bought the superbible a couple of months ago, and so far I consider it a very good buy. As others have pointed out, you may want to read it in conjunction with other things, such as the Arcsynthesis tutorials.
If you google it (or even look on these forums) you’ll find a lot of negative reviews on the superbible; most focusing on the authors pushing their own library and obscuring things ‘under the hood’ in earlier editions. However from what I’ve found, most of this is fixed in the 6th edition and things are explained in depth.
The only gripe I have with the book is that sometimes you’ll dive into a chapter and it has some level of assumed knowledge. However that assumed knowledge isn’t explained until later chapters; I think this may be a result of chapters/sections being written by different authors… The continuity suffers a little bit. Nonetheless, it is a rare occurance and you can easily overcome it.
In summary, I reccomend the book.
nerb.
Oh and:
I think you’ll find that with whatever path you take. OpenGL doesn’t appear to be a subject that makes nice, easy bed-time reading unfortunately.
The 6th edition of the Superbible drops the framework from the 5th edition and jumps into shaders from the get go. There’s still some helper code, but that’s to be expected.
That said, I’ve never understood the criticism about the 5th edition. The author actually teaches OpenGL in workshops. With mondern GL, he found the most effective approach was to ease people into it by starting out teaching the principles through the framework then, once they “get it”, moving on to the nitty gritty details. He took that approach in the 5th edition, which was the first version to drop the legacy stuff. All the complaints about the 5th edition completely ignore the fact that he goes into the details on shaders and such starting in chapter 6. It’s as if they looked at the first two or three chapters, got frustrated with seeing framework code everywhere, and went to the internet to bitch about it. Then people who’ve never even read it are out there saying that it teaches the author’s framework and not OpenGL, which is completely untrue. And so a pretty decent book gets relegated to the dustbin.
Anyway, the 6th edition seems to have satisfied most people. IMO, it’s one of the better books out there to start from the beginning with.