How do i get started? with OGL3.1

Hello!, i’m planning on making 3D games with OpenGL. I’m getting confused with all the different versions, headers, libraries, extensions, etc; I’m pretty good with the fixed pipeline but i have to learn the modern stuff. So how do i setup my PC for modern OpenGL development? And were can I learn this as painless as possible? the arcsynthesis us pre-make which is annoying for me i don’t know why. He also doesn’t explain each function. For a beginner well. Also with all that complicated math stuff that I could get to on my own time. All help is greatly appreciated! :smiley:
I use:

  • SDL2.0.0
  • Code::Blocks 13:12
  • Windows 8.1 64-bit

[QUOTE=Mallot1;1260324] So how do i setup my PC for modern OpenGL development? And were can I learn this as painless as possible? the arcsynthesis us pre-make which is annoying for me i don’t know why. He also doesn’t explain each function. For a beginner well. Also with all that complicated math stuff that I could get to on my own time. All help is greatly appreciated! :smiley:
I use:

  • SDL2.0.0
  • Code::Blocks 13:12
  • Windows 8.1 64-bit[/QUOTE]

All you need are current drivers and a decent graphics card. There are no SDKs to install but many people tend to use loading libraries such as GLEW or GL Load and helper toolkits such as Freeglut or GLFW. Of course, everything can be done with Win32 API if you don’t like using 3rd party libraries. If you want to start from scratch, then you may want to look here: OpenGL 4.0 on Windows Tutorials

I find http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/ to be an outstanding resource as it explains everything quite nicely. If you don’t like pre-make, then don’t use it. The code compiles fine without it.

The other resource I found very helpful is http://ogldev.atspace.co.uk/ which is based on Linux but that hardly matters since the examples focus on using OpenGL, not the platform. The recent OpenGL Programming Guide 8th edition (Red Book) and the Superbible 6th edition are also quite good. Note that they both target OpenGL 4.3 not OpenGL 3.1.

Thanks! I started reading the OpenGL ES programming guide 2nd edition last night :smiley: and i got the redbok and super bible as well. I have GLEW and GLFW. Thanks also for the other resource I never seen those before. Well off to learnig thanks again! :D:D