OpenGL Library (7th Edition) [Paperback]

Dave Shreiner (Author), The Khronos OpenGL ARB Working Group (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 032163764X | ISBN-13: 978-0321637642 | Publication Date: August 6, 2009 | Edition: 7

This boxed set includes:

• The best-selling OpenGL^® Programming Guide, Seventh Edition, which covers the latest releases of OpenGL, Versions 3.0 and 3.1, and includes a 16-page color insert. This is the definitive guide to graphics programming with OpenGL, the platform-independent standard for professional-quality 3D graphics.

• The popular OpenGL^® Shading Language, Third Edition, which addresses the more integrated nature of the shading language in OpenGL 3.0 and 3.1, with key coverage of special shading techniques, light and shading techniques, light and shadow shaders, and multipass shaders.

• Plus: A bonus schematic poster of the OpenGL Machine for both the 3.0 and 3.1 versions of OpenGL

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dave Shreiner, director of graphics technology at ARM, Inc., was a longtime member of the core OpenGL team at SGI. He authored the first commercial OpenGL training course and has been developing computer graphics applications for more than two decades.

 

Randi Rost was a core contributor to the development of the OpenGL Shading Language and the OpenGL API that supports it. He is also one of the first programmers to design and implement shaders using this technology. Randi works at Intel.

 

Bill Licea-Kane is principal member of technical staff at AMD and has been chair of the ARB OpenGL Shading Language workgroup since its inception. He has taught several courses in OpenGL Shading Language at both SIGGRAPH and GDC. Bill works in the

OpenGL Group at AMD.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1728 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 7 edition (August 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 032163764X
• ISBN-13: 978-0321637642
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.1 x 3.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #719,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #36 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Graphics & Multimedia > OpenGL

More About the Author

Dave Shreiner started his graphics career hacking on a Commodore 64 back in 1981 (a mere 15 years after his birth [yes, late by today's standards], but computers weren't prevalent in Etters, Pennsylvania at that time). Things started to get interesting at the University of Delaware in 1988, where he got to work on his (well, his employer's) first Silicon Graphics Computer Systems ("SGI" to those how know and loved them) machine (a 4D/220GTX running at 25MHz). Combining his love of science, mathematics, and video games, his first graphics programs were for visualizing molecules.

After a somewhat tumultuous college career, Dave went on to do more work on SGI machines doing flight simulation and user-interface design. As that work dried up, he joined SGI in 1991 helping graphics programmers work with Iris GL (OpenGL's predecessor). His career continued as he began teaching classes on Iris GL, user-interface design, and parallel and real-time programming, all the while being mentored by Mason Woo. Around the same time, he was introduced to the fledgling OpenGL API being developed, and asked to author an introductory course on the subject.

Around the same time, he met Vicki - his future wife - eventually mentoring her in OpenGL programming. Not long after, they wed, and formed a family mostly composed of felines.

In 1997, Dave joined forces with Mason in his first writing activity as they updated the "OpenGL Programming Guide" (the "Red Book") to its third edition. At the same time, Mason and co-presenter Ed Angel (author of "Interactive Computer Graphics: A top-down approach using OpenGL") added Dave into their SIGGRAPH (the annual computer graphics conference) course team, and so the mayhem began.

Over the next decade, Dave continued to work at SGI in various roles, including OpenGL driver development for many of their products. He also updated the "OpenGL Programming Guide" three more times, and was involved in presenting another 13 SIGGRAPH courses on OpenGL (and countless others at other conferences). Also during this time, Addison-Wesley - the publisher of the "OpenGL Programming Guide" and numerous other books related to OpenGL - made him series editor for their OpenGL library, allowing him to provide direction and input into their books relating to OpenGL.

In 2006, Dave's career steered to a new vector, as he went off to do work on GPU computing. At the same time, he also worked as chair of SIGGRAPH's courses program (as well as once again presenting a course).

While GPU computing was increasing in relevance, Dave felt that mobile computer graphics was on the cusp of becoming an even bigger thing, and joined ARM's (the embedded CPU company) graphics group to directly contribute to the fray. Soon after, he became involved with OpenGL ES, the embedded version of OpenGL. At the same time, he contributed to the "OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide", and began presenting courses on OpenGL's embedded version.

Most recently, Dave joined long-time collaborator and fellow author, Ed Angel, in updating his textbook - "Interactive Computer Graphics" - to a new shader-only format, and is currently working on revising the "OpenGL Programming Guide" to reflect the most recent changes in OpenGL.

Dave lives with Vicki and their cat Phantom, splitting their time between their home in Mountain View and Sonoma County in California's wine country.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars only one half of it is worth it, so why why buy the packaged set?, April 12, 2010

By 

anon (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: OpenGL Library (7th Edition) (Paperback)

As for the "OpenGL Shading Language - 3rd ed" that half of this set is very good and very relevant today. I would give that half of it at least 4 and very possibly 5 stars.

But this set also brings along with another book which I think would be of relatively little use to most people so I knock this packaged set down to only 2 stars.

I'd just get the GLSL 3rd edition alone and forget about this set, unless you are both new to OpenGL and will need to use both an old code base using old-style OpenGL as well develop new style code.

Here is my review of the other half this set copied and pasted here:
I'm honestly not sure that this book will be very useful to many people at all.

If you are both new to OpenGL and will have to deal with old OpenGL code, then it might just be worth it, otherwise, forget it.

First, literally 85-90% of the pages in the book relate to functions that have been deprecated.
Second, it doesn't make it all that clear exactly what has or hasn't been deprecated so it's rather a mess to dig through to find the relevant bits.
Finally, it covers rather little beyond the very basics of GLSL, which is basically what OpenGL 3.0+ is all about.

Let me put it this way:

If you will have to deal with old code base but already know OpenGL pre-3.0 well then you already know how to deal with old OpenGL code base and since the new stuff is so buried and so sparse what does this get you?

If you are new to OpenGL and won't have to deal with an old code base why bother with all the deprecated junk? You do not want to be starting off new code doing it the old ways. In this case:

If you need to know the basics of the 3D graphics, don't try to learn it from this book, get a solid, general purpose 3D graphics book for that (or at least something like "Advanced Graphics Programming using OpenGL" which also uses largely deprecated functions but it's written in a better style for this purpose).

For a basic introduction on how to use OpenGL (to get yourself up to speed on the basic outline of the API), get something like "Beginning OpenGL Game Programming 2nd ed" just get you started. It'll quickly show you the basic ropes of OpenGL and what you need to do to get the system initialized, viewports set, shaders initialized, rendering attached to Windows windows and some basic info on vertex buffers and such. Just looking at the basic, free SDK/docs it would tricky to figure out where to begin, this will show you. After that, for more advanced commands dealing with buffers you can just look at the free OpenGL documents/search the web to learn what more you need, it should all make sense once you know the basic outline of OpenGL.

To learn more about the new shader model and changes to GLSL get a book like "OpenGL Shading Language - 3rd ed", way more useful than the few pages in this book on that topic.

So:
If you already know OpenGL 2.0 just get "OpenGL Shading Language - 3rd ed" and download the latest free OpenGL 3.3 (or whatever version) docs and you are good to go, don't even bother with this book.

If you know nothing about OpenGL but do know about 3D graphics then just get "Beginning OpenGL Game Programming 2nd ed" to get you introduced to the API and then get"OpenGL Shading Language - 3rd ed" and download the latest free OpenGL 3.3 (or whatever version) docs and you are good to go, don't even bother with this book.

If you know nothing about 3D graphics or OpenGL then get the above two books and add some general references on 3D graphics and don't even bother with this book.

Only if you are both new and will also need to deal with an advanced, but old, code base, bother with this book.

0 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding presentation, February 11, 2010

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: OpenGL Library (7th Edition) (Paperback)

The two-volume slipcased by Dave Shreiner, Randi Rost, Bill Licea-Kane, OPEN GL LIBRARY, 5TH EDITION, offers a fine survey packing the third edition of OPEN GL SHADING LANGUAGE and the 7th updated edition of OPEN GL PROGRAMMING GUIDE under one cover. Any computer collection strong in Open GL must have this presentation: it's packed with coverage of the latest releases of Open GL and offers outstanding, specific survey of usage techniques. No serious computer collection should be without this. An outstanding presentation.