OpenGL Distilled [Paperback]

I often get asked for good starter books that can teach proper OpenGL concepts. The problem with most of these books is that concepts are expressed en masse with huge code blocks, often obscuring the actual concept being expressed. In this reguards, "Distilled" is that. The author expresses a concept, discusses relevant caveats and practices, then endows us with a short example. The authors coding standards and style are kept minimally intrusive.

A few pros: though most examples use GLUT, Win32 setup is covered. Shaders are presented in the book, as well as other 1.5+ features, but the book does not hang on shaders (the Third Edition Superbible is horrible about this).

Cons: As with any OpenGL book, GLUT.

The areas covered are relevant, and what you need to know about OpenGL is there. I would recommend book over the Superbible or RedBook for beginners, and would wager it contends with them as a reference material.

In "OpenGL Distilled", Paul Martz details the essential elements of the OpenGL 2.0 API used in regular development. As the title describes, the book is a concise 266 pages that span eight chapters and four appendices. The book is published by Addison-Wesley Professional (ISBN: 0321336798) and is retails for $35 USD.

Starting with the first chapter, An Introduction to OpenGL, Martz provides a brief paragraph or two of background summary, followed by what you will, and will not learn in the chapter. The writing and flow is well structured and consistent, making it easy to follow. Each chapter picks a subset of the OpenGL API and highlights the practical issues with each command that a programmer may encounter in actual development.

The other chapters, Drawing Primitives, Transformation and Viewing, Lighting, Pixel Rectangles, Texture Mapping, Extensions and Versions, and Platform-Specific Interface, all follow an identical format. Each chapter picks and describes the usage of several of the core OpenGL API commands.

Generally, the selected commands are well chosen as they are fundamental to the API. The text illustrates usage, pitfalls, and occasionally provides common debugging solutions with the selected commands. Throughout the book, small code fragments and example code is provided. Each code fragment shows operational usage of the key API commands covered in the chapter. There is also a web site where you can download all of the source code, view the color slides, and check for updates.

While the book also provides many references to other sources of OpenGL API information, it doesn't attempt to describe all the API functions. As such, extension libraries, such as GLU/GLUT, shaders, or complex lighting aren't considered due to scope. This might disappoint more sophisticated programmers.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that the book is geared toward the novice graphics programmer. The book assumes at least a casual familiarity with the OpenGL API and doesn't attempt to be instructional. While the second chapter, Drawing Primitives, starts with glBegin()/glEnd(), it jumps straight into methods of drawing primitives using vertex arrays, and finishes with details of the rendering pipeline (clearing the frame buffer, model transformations, depth tests, and alpha blending).

The book also does a nice job highlighting multiplatform nuances encountered in the OpenGL API. Not only is a chapter dedicated to three of the major operating systems, Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, but the downloaded example code also compiles on those targets as well.

Interestingly, the book comes with a free 45-day coupon to view it electronically via Safari, an online partnership with several major publishers that "rents" a dynamic bookshelf for reference texts. The service features a large number of technical books complete with search, preview, and printing capability. With the smallest bookshelf, users can keep up to 5 books and rotate books (at most) once every 30 days. The basic 5-slot cost is $10 per month, although other options with additional features also exist. It's a compelling service with a growing number of books from which to choose.

The book seems to best serve intermediate OpenGL programmers. Developers who already have some experience writing OpenGL applications and have already read the "Red Book" ("OpenGL Programming Guide, Version 2" by Shreiner, Woo, et al) would do well with this book. But those doing more sophisticated rendering, with shaders or other cutting edge features of the API for example, may find it's not as valuable of a reference and should consider browsing it via Safari prior to making a purchasing decision.

I recently bought all of the official OpenGL books including OpenGL Distilled. Before having these, I have only used up to OpenGL 1.2 because the red and blue book I had before only cover OpenGL 1.2.

This book was a great place to get acquainted with the new OpenGL features like Vertex Buffer Objects. It also has a decent section for the platform specific setup (I didn't even notice but I was creating my Window with the wrong parameters the whole time).

The book is a lot smaller than I thought it would be (it's about 2cm thick) but that's a good thing. It's a quick reference manual for a lot that OpenGL has to offer. If you're looking for more in depth OpenGL knowledge, try the red or orange book instead (The super bible 4th edition looks good as well).