Links

University of the West of Scotland

Graphics Programming Links and Resources

• OpenGL

  • freeglut Cross platform windowing & input library for OpenGL
  • OpenGL Shading Language Home of the OpenGL ‘Orange Book’
  • OpenGL SuperBible
  • OpenGL.org The OpenGL homepage
  • SFML The ‘Simple Fast Media Library’ – a GLUT alternative with additional support for media files

• Animation

  • MD2 – MD2 is the file format used in Quake II. There are many pages and tutorials on the web which explain how MD2 works and which include sample code.
  • MD3 – MD3 is the file format used in Quake III. Again, there are many pages and tutorials on the web which explain how this file format works and which include sample code.
  • MD5 (File Format) -MD5 is the file format used in Doom III. This format uses skeletal animation. There are relatively few resources online which describe this more complex format.

• Engines

  • ID Tech 3 Quake 3/ID Tech 3 – ID software released the code (but not game art assets) for Quake 3 under an open source licence. This has since been used to power a number of other projects.
  • OGRE3D

• General C++

  • cplusplus.com Tutorial
  • Wikiversity: C++
  • Wikiversity: Computer Programming Wikiversity (brought to you by the folks from Wikipedia) has a number of complete wiki-based courses on computer programming. These cover all levels – from beginner through to a number of advanced topics.

• Graphics Programming

  • Free Resources (RTR)
  • Graphics Books (RTR)
  • Real Time Rendering
  • Real Time Rendering: Intersection Tests
  • Real Time Rendering: Portal
  • SIGGRAPH
  • 3D terrain following

• Java

  • Java Game Development Philip Hanna at Queen’s University Belfast has made his Java Games Programming materials available here. Much of this material is useful to anyone learning to program and create games – in any language. Not Creative Commons, but freely available.
  • Programming Methodology This course is taken by students studying a wide range of subjects, and is aimed at complete beginners. The course home page is here, which has links to the videos on YouTube, iTunes, and Torrents – plus handouts and additional course materials.