Looking for advice (DX vs. OpenGL)
Posted: August 15th, 2020, 7:50 pm
I'm looking for some advice here. I know everyone on this forum is going to be biased toward DX, but I thought I'd ask anyway.
This spring, I took a university computer graphics class. They taught me OpenGL in C++. We covered up to GLCallLists for rendering large numbers of triangles, but the second half of the class was disrupted by the Varona Cirus pandemic.
On my own, over the summer I started looking for more advanced tutorials and was told that (apparently) the GLCallList is kind of deprecated and that VBO's, VAO's, etc. are the way to go.
I tried several tutorials about those in OpenGL, and it went so far over my head I think it might have made a new crater on the moon. I remembered how easy and fun it was to follow Chili's beginner-level course, so I thought I'd give his 3D tutorials a try.
Things started out okay, but now I'm on episode 28 and starting to get lost. Instead of writing out the code and explaining as he goes, most of it is just "pull this from GitHub" with a brief summary. I don't really understand 80% of it. Between each episode I've been trying to fiddle with the code and see if I can make it do different things, but for the most part I don't understand what the hell is going on. I'm currently at the "swirling tornado of random shapes" stage of the project. I tried to make some shapes of my own, but after a few days of frustration I haven't had any success at modifying the code for myself.
The GLCallLists were doing everything I needed them to do. All I want is a thing I can shove a bunch of triangles into and have it draw them -- but I saw in multiple places that they're deprecated and should be phased out.
So what should I do:
A. GLCallLists aren't as deprecated as they say, just go back to what I know.
B. Give the OpenGL VBO/VAO/etc. another try.
C. Chili already owns my soul at this point, do what it says at the top of the forum and learn DX or die trying.
This spring, I took a university computer graphics class. They taught me OpenGL in C++. We covered up to GLCallLists for rendering large numbers of triangles, but the second half of the class was disrupted by the Varona Cirus pandemic.
On my own, over the summer I started looking for more advanced tutorials and was told that (apparently) the GLCallList is kind of deprecated and that VBO's, VAO's, etc. are the way to go.
I tried several tutorials about those in OpenGL, and it went so far over my head I think it might have made a new crater on the moon. I remembered how easy and fun it was to follow Chili's beginner-level course, so I thought I'd give his 3D tutorials a try.
Things started out okay, but now I'm on episode 28 and starting to get lost. Instead of writing out the code and explaining as he goes, most of it is just "pull this from GitHub" with a brief summary. I don't really understand 80% of it. Between each episode I've been trying to fiddle with the code and see if I can make it do different things, but for the most part I don't understand what the hell is going on. I'm currently at the "swirling tornado of random shapes" stage of the project. I tried to make some shapes of my own, but after a few days of frustration I haven't had any success at modifying the code for myself.
The GLCallLists were doing everything I needed them to do. All I want is a thing I can shove a bunch of triangles into and have it draw them -- but I saw in multiple places that they're deprecated and should be phased out.
So what should I do:
A. GLCallLists aren't as deprecated as they say, just go back to what I know.
B. Give the OpenGL VBO/VAO/etc. another try.
C. Chili already owns my soul at this point, do what it says at the top of the forum and learn DX or die trying.