Anton's OpenGL 4 Tutorials book demo code

This series of demos accompanies the e-book "Anton's OpenGL 4 Tutorials": antongerdelan.net/opengl

Info

See LICENCE.txt for licence information.

Each chapter with major demonstration code has a corresponding demo here. There is also an example of code for Hello Triangle for OpenGL 2.1 for reference.

Each demo has easy-to-read Makefiles for Linux, MacOS, and Windows. You may need to download newer versions of the libraries in the third_party/ folder.

This code is some years old now and builds may fall out of date. I try to maintain this so that it functions, but be aware that Makefiles and build details may differ slightly from book text for this reason.

Compiling Demos

Linux

• Install a C and C++ compiler - usually by installing a build-essential bundle package via the package manager on your distribution. E.g. for Ubuntu:

sudo apt install build-essential

• Install the GLEW, GLFW3, FreeType, and Assimp development libraries: sudo apt install libglew-dev libglfw3-dev libfreetype-dev libassimp-dev

• Open a terminal and cd to the demo of choice, then: make -f Makefile.linux64

• To build all the demos you can run ./build_all_linux_osx.sh from the main directory.

Apple macOS

• Install Clang or GNU compiler and tools - usually by installing Apple XCode through the App Store.

• You will probably wish to install libraries via Homebrew, similarly to Linux, above. brew install glew glfw assimp freetype

• Open a terminal and cd to the demo of choice: make -f Makefile.osx

• To build all the demos you can run ./build_all_linux_osx.sh from the main directory.

Windows with Visual Studio

Create a new Empty, C++, Console project. You can then easily install the required libraries with NuGet, under the Project menu of a new C++ project, and you're ready to draw a triangle in 5 minutes.

Install Libraries with NuGet

1. In the Browse tab search for and install; glfw, and glew. For later tutorials you can also find assimp, and freetype, when required.
2. You need to add the text opengl32.lib to your linker input string. You can find this in Project->Properties->Configuration Properties->Linker->Input->Additional Dependencies. Just add opengl32.lib; to the front of the long string of dependencies so that it changes to opengl32.lib;kernel32.lib;user32;....
3. You do not need to add the libraries you installed via NuGet to the linker string.
4. You can now compile a "Hello Triangle" demo for OpenGL using GLFW and GLEW.

Install Libraries Manually

If you would rather do things the old fashioned way, without using a package manager, I have recorded a 2020 video stream tutorial where I show how to get Visual Studio set up and start programming OpenGL, including downloading and setting up libraries.

Tutorial: Intro to 3D Graphics Programming with OpenGL 4 (with Anton). Stream Recording.

This includes a very verbose set-up of Visual Studio 2019 with helper libraries.

Windows with GCC

• Install the GNU Compiler Collection - usually by installing MinGW. I suggest the minimal MinGW GCC distro at https://nuwen.net/mingw.html.
• Open a console and cd to the demo of choice.
• make -f Makefile.win64

If you have trouble linking supporting libraries you may need to download and recompile GLFW, GLEW, AssImp, and FreeType. It's a good idea to do this anyway to stay up to date.

• https://www.glfw.org/
• https://glew.sourceforge.net/
• https://freetype.org/download.html
• https://github.com/assimp/assimp

Caveats and Errata

• Since publication the most reliable version of newer OpenGL that will work everywhere, including macOS, is 4.1 Core. I suggest setting window hints to try this version first.
• Code is directly copy-pasted from book sections. This means that there will be redundant OpenGL calls to bind things etc., but I think it's easier to follow along like this.
• Code explained in prior examples is moved to a file called gl_utils.cpp to avoid cluttering main.cpp. This means that gl_utils.cpp is not necessarily the same in each demo, but is built up gradually.
• Out-of-date build files have been removed; 32-bit builds, and older Visual Studio files.
• Sometimes people ask for C examples. OpenGL is a C API, and I would have used C if writing the text later. Readers wishing to use a C compiler should do so - only very minor code convention changes are required.

Contributors

Special thanks to all the readers over the years that have submitted additions, bug reports, fixes, and feedback. If you have submitted a correction and don't mind having your name/@ printed here please let me know (or if you'd like to change these details).

• Olivier Nivoix
• Sarang Baheti https://github.com/sarangbaheti
• kevin
• Jon
• Julien Castelain https://github.com/julien
• Benjamin Summerton https://github.com/define-private-public
• Fwjrei
• guysherman
• 24kwakahana
• battila7
• Gnimuc https://github.com/Gnimuc
• Peter Getek https://github.com/postfixNotation
• Mikel Losada https://github.com/Workshoft
• Kevin Moran https://github.com/kevinmoran
• Jon https://github.com/0xBAMA
• Pablo Alonso-Villaverde Roza https://github.com/pavroza