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Can anyone recommend some advanced tutorials for making a 3D engine with OpenGL? I'm looking for something beyond rendering simple polygons with gouraud shading

by reedlaw 11y ago

Can anyone recommend some advanced tutorials for making a 3D engine with OpenGL? I'm looking for something beyond rendering simple polygons with gouraud shading. How do you handle loading large worlds while maintaining a high frame rate? How do you make scenes more realistic with shadows and ambient occlusion?

munchbunny 11y ago
This is a very, very deep rabbit hole. The kind which people make PhD's and careers out of digging into this hole. Actually, it's several holes. Loading large worlds while maintaining a high frame rate? It's one deep problem for Skyrim-style worlds. Another for shooters. Yet another for Minecraft. Shadows are yet another deep problem, and so is ambient occlusion, and any number of lighting/rendering techniques. In other words, you're not really in tutorial territory anymore. You're in article/paper territory.
- reedlaw 11y ago
  What you say is very true. Maybe I should have said "intermediate" tutorials. Even though the problem area is so deep and complex there have been astonishing engines produced by very small teams, such as: * http://procworld.blogspot.com/ http://procworld.blogspot.com/ which is a voxel-based rendering engine mostly developed by one person * http://the-witness.net/ http://the-witness.net/ which is a game with a custom engine developed by a small team and features many realistic effects
- moonchrome 11y ago
  As someone whose dug these holes before - there are tutorials even for advanced stuff, usually when a hacker figures out some paper he shares it with others in a less academicky way and then it's much easier to pick up. I still remember casey muratori gjk video in highschool, i found some paper using math notation for sums and throwing abstract terms arround and then I saw this guys video and it clicked and I had a collision detection demo running in two days. Academic approach is nececary for research work but when you're just implementing stuff it's already been groked by other people and you can find their blog/notes/code online.
misnome 11y ago
I have found the book "Game Engine Architecture" a really interesting read, and a seemingly good introduction to the required concepts: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1466560010 http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1466560010

by reedlaw 11y ago

munchbunny 11y ago

This is a very, very deep rabbit hole. The kind which people make PhD's and careers out of digging into this hole. Actually, it's several holes. Loading large worlds while maintaining a high frame rate? It's one deep problem for Skyrim-style worlds. Another for shooters. Yet another for Minecraft. Shadows are yet another deep problem, and so is ambient occlusion, and any number of lighting/rendering techniques. In other words, you're not really in tutorial territory anymore. You're in article/paper territory.

reedlaw 11y ago
What you say is very true. Maybe I should have said "intermediate" tutorials. Even though the problem area is so deep and complex there have been astonishing engines produced by very small teams, such as: * http://procworld.blogspot.com/ http://procworld.blogspot.com/ which is a voxel-based rendering engine mostly developed by one person * http://the-witness.net/ http://the-witness.net/ which is a game with a custom engine developed by a small team and features many realistic effects
moonchrome 11y ago
As someone whose dug these holes before - there are tutorials even for advanced stuff, usually when a hacker figures out some paper he shares it with others in a less academicky way and then it's much easier to pick up. I still remember casey muratori gjk video in highschool, i found some paper using math notation for sums and throwing abstract terms arround and then I saw this guys video and it clicked and I had a collision detection demo running in two days. Academic approach is nececary for research work but when you're just implementing stuff it's already been groked by other people and you can find their blog/notes/code online.

misnome 11y ago

I have found the book "Game Engine Architecture" a really interesting read, and a seemingly good introduction to the required concepts: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1466560010 http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1466560010