OpenGL

OpenGL Bootcamp is an intensive 5-day training course that will arm you with the knowledge to make your 2D and 3D visualizations fly!

As problem sets explode in complexity, radical gains in performance have resulted from moving traditional graphics processing from the CPU to graphics hardware. If you are doing any work concerning graphics, then you must know OpenGL and this class is the fastest way to master the ideas and techniques of OpenGL programming. By taking full advantage of hardware acceleration, shaders, blending, textures and video we'll help you get the most out of your data. Learn how OpenGL works, what functionality it does and does not provide, various optimization methods for both static and dynamic data, and much more.

The course will provide libraries and frameworks for abstracting the operating system and allowing the student to focus solely on learning OpenGL. Concepts and exercises which are tangentially related to OpenGL and depend on interaction with the OS will be taught using Mac OS X technologies (such as multiple rendering contexts or multithreaded OpenGL applications).

Students will be provided a copy of OpenGL Super Bible Fifth Edition.

What You’ll Learn

Upon completion of OpenGL, the student will be able to:

OpenGL Bootcamp

• Write visualizations using OpenGL on Mac OS X
• Understand how modern graphics work
• Use OpenGL for both 2D and 3D visualizations
• Understand the issues involved with data visualization and how to address them using OpenGL
• Apply code to future OpenGL applications
• Understand how to write cross-platform OpenGL visualizations
• Understand how to migrate OpenGL visualizations from the desktop to the handheld device, like the iPhone or and Android device
• Understand the various methods of GPU programing and how they can increase performance of a wide range of applications

Section	Contents

OpenGL	Click to Show

OpenGL	Click to Hide
Introduction	An introduction to OpenGL, the instructor, and the course.
A simple OpenGL application	Create a simple white square on a black background.
Expanding our Rendering	Add multiple colors to our example, along with a couple of other primitives.
So many ways to animate	Discussion on traditional frame-based animation vs time-based approaches, followed by making our square bounce around the screen.
Much more than point and shoot	Expand into the realm of 3D by examining projection transformation, viewport and clipping planes
Much more than point and shoot	Model-view transformations
Some objects	Some simple 3D shapes; the camera model
User interactivity	Capturing keys and clicks: at least for prototyping
An image is worth a thousand vertices	How to load a display textures; when to use textures for more than just detailing models
More on images as textures	Image loaders or readers used with OpenGL
Hidden surface removal	A little history behind hidden surface removal, followed by a discussion of culling back-facing planes and the depth buffer
On colors	All about the OpenGL color mode, how vertex colors work, and when and why you should use colors over lighting.
On lighting (1)	Diffuse lighting with a shader
On blending, transparency and opacity	How blending works in OpenGL; how to use the blending algorithm to your advantage; how to draw opaque and translucent objects; more use of the depth buffer
How to store your vertices	A little about how to store a model and how to retrieve a model
Beyond the "stock shaders"	Beginning development of OpenGL-SL, the OpenGL shading language; how to write your own shaders.
On lighting (2)	A shader with more than one light and with "real" material surfaces
Calculating normals	Normals are essential to lighting. You might have to calculate normals on your own; take a deep breath — it's not hard
Tessellation	OpenGL works only on convex polygons, and prefers triangles. What can you do with arbitrary polygonal shapes?
Quadrics	Neat primitive 3D objects you can use
Getting Data on the GPU	Vertex arrays and vertex buffer objects unmasked; what more than a "batch"?
Vertex Shaders	Interesting effects with a vertex shader; fog
Fragment Shaders	Texture examples
Fragment Shaders	Texture and lighting
OS-specific issues	OpenGL with Mac OS
OS-specific issues	OpenGL-ES with iOS
Off-screen rendering	The use of rendering into an off-screen buffer
Index buffers	More than one picture from the same dataset

Requirements

For best results, students should know a procedural programming language (such as C) and have a basic understanding of trigonometry and vector mathematics.

Reviews

• Jonathan Saggau
• Mark Dalrymple