OpenGL SuperBible: Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference [Paperback]

I've learned OpenGL thanks to Richards books (the 2nd and 4th editions of the SuperBible), and today work as a professional 3D game engine programmer. Those books are very educational, and allow a newcomer to learn OpenGL faster than any other OpenGL programming book I've found. The 5th edition focuses on the new "core" OpenGL profile, which has deprecated the legacy "fixed function" API. The authors admit that they had a difficult task when rewriting the SuperBible - how do they lower the barrier of entry to a new API which is not beginner friendly? Their solution was to create a new OpenGL toolkit which simplifies access to core OpenGL. And this is the biggest issue with the 5th edition of the SuperBible - the book explains their custom toolkit, and not OpenGL itself. What a disappointment for someone wanting to learn modern OpenGL.

My recommendation for new comers to OpenGL and 3D programming: get the 4th edition of the SuperBible, and then grab the OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide to learn about the "core" OpenGL profile. With OpenGL ES 2.0 (embedded systems), the Khronnos group have removed all the legacy accessors from OpenGL, and left only the bare minimal needed to create 3D applications using programmable shaders. The Khronnos group did such a good job with ES 2.0, that they decided to remove all legacy code from core OpenGL as well, and today (with the exception of geometry shaders), OpenGL ES2.0 and OpenGL 4.1 are essentially the same API. The ES2.0 programming guide also explains modern 3D graphics hardware design better than any other book I've discovered, and more importantly, it not only explains how to access the hardware using the new API, it explains WHY the API evolved to what it is today. Why is there a limit to number of attributes? What are the benefits of packing attributes? How to pack them? etc. All of this is covered in the ES 2.0 book. Richard Wright's SuperBible ignores them. The WHY is more important than the HOW.

Hopefully, Richard will correct his mistake with the 5th edition, and a rewritten 6th edition will be something magnificant.

For years, books in the OpenGL SuperBible series were recommended for anyone looking for an excellent tutorial and thorough coverage of OpenGL features. But up to OpenGL 2.0, programming in OpenGL was done through the fixed function pipeline, and the OpenGL SuperBible books were the best place to start learning that. With GLSL introduced in OpenGL 2.0, OpenGL supported both the traditional fixed function pipeline and a new programmable pipeline where you can write your own shader programs and have much more control over the graphic card. OpenGL 2.0 tried to have the best of both worlds: if you liked the old OpenGL then you can use it, and if you wanted to experiment with modern OpenGL you can use that as well. That resulted in a huge API with conflicting design goals. This conflict can be seen in the OpenGL(R) SuperBible: Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference (4th Edition), reflecting the version of OpenGL it covered. The tutorial part focused exclusively on fixed-function OpenGL. That part was excellent and I still use it as a reference when I'm programming for old mobile devices that supported only OpenGL ES 1.0. The book also introduced shaders among other advanced topics in the second part. This introduction didn't really follow from what you learned in the tutorial part. It was a group of separate articles that were written in a different style and tone. I don't doubt you can easily pick it up and learn writing shaders from these chapters, but they didn't really go about teaching you how to write shaders, instead focusing more on showing you cool examples of stuff you can do with shaders. Given that a lot of what you do with shaders requires a mathematical background -- which the 4th edition got around by introducing only what's necessary, someone learning OpenGL without such a background would get confused when suddenly the later chapters are talking about cosines and other concepts.

Eventually, the OpenGL API evolved and the fixed function commands were all deprecated and later moved to a different profile. The new OpenGL was much leaner and only revolves about creating shaders and writing to buffers. The problem is that it's easy to teach the old OpenGL, you don't need to know the underlying details of how light is calculated or how transformations are performed to write a program in fixed function OpenGL. You can get away without teaching anything but basic mathematics, and you could still come up with strong examples. With modern OpenGL, things are different. There is no built in lighting equation, no matrix stack, no functions to rotate an object or set a camera. You have to write all of that yourself. A book teaching modern OpenGL, or the core profile of OpenGL 3.3, needs to teach you not only OpenGL, but also the fundamentals of 3D graphics. Such a book would be quite big, advanced for many users, and wouldn't be able to cover all the features of OpenGL. How can you create a simple and thorough book about modern OpenGL? If you can assume that the reader knows the fixed function pipeline, then it's easier to teach them the new features. But what if you can't assume that?

The authors of OpenGL SuperBible 5 found a way around, and it works quite well. The authors built a library that allows people to start writing impressive programs right away. They don't have to worry about setting up vertex buffer objects, writing shaders, or any of that. This way you can start teaching by giving practical examples, and you slowly teach OpenGL by introducing the concepts behind that library. Make no mistake, this book doesn't teach you to use that specific library, it teaches you OpenGL. Anything you do with the library you will learn to do yourself in OpenGL in later chapters. Shaders are introduced early and follow wonderfully from previous discussion. Many advanced features are covered in detail and you learn how to write shaders, and not just how to copy and paste example code. The result is fantastic; the tutorial part is by far the best introduction to modern OpenGL you'll find. You still don't need a mathematical background, and the 3D math chapter does a good job of introducing all the ingredients you will need to write programs.

The book is divided into 3 parts. The first part is an introduction and tutorial, the second part is about advanced topics such as buffers and dealing with geometry, and the final part is about platform specific issues including a coverage of OpenGL ES for mobile devices. The tutorial part is great and if the book constituted only of this part, it'd definitely be worth buying. The advanced topic coverage is really variable. Some topics are covered in great detail and with useful examples (I really liked the introduction to the geometry shader for example), other topics are introduced in a hurry and just throw examples at you without even explaining what the example is supposed to do or teach. I'm not sure if this is really a bad thing. You need to realize that some of these advanced topics are actually quite advanced, and the book doesn't assume much from the reader. Including them in the book is a benefit because once you've learned more from other sources or from your own experiments you can go back to these chapters and understand them better. None of these chapters is bad, they just don't follow from what you learned from the tutorial part. For example, the basic idea of multisampling is introduced early, which is good for an example where you just enable multisampling and see the result. Later chapters go into the fine details of how multisampling is implemented, based on the basic introduction. If you already understand multisampling then it'd all make sense, but if your only source is the book then it can be hard to follow. Another example is the chapter which introduces buffers, the sample program tries to 'look cool' where a simpler (and uglier) sample would have been more appropriate.

Speaking of the sample programs, the code is generally well written and properly commented. Going through the source code for the book library is a great way to learn. Most of the samples compiled fine on Linux (using the binary Nvidia driver), but some gave me black screens or wrong results. I also had to make some changes to the code to make certain samples work. A few samples don't even come with makefiles for Linux. I sent an email about it to the author and it'll hopefully get fixed eventually. The google code repository where the samples are hosted does get updated so I wouldn't worry much about that.

Summary: if you want to learn modern OpenGL (post 3.0), then get the book. Even if you already have the 4th edition and know a bit about shaders and buffers, you will still benefit from the book because it covers many more advanced topics and I'm sure there will be a thing or two you didn't know about. While I spent some time talking about perceived problems like complex advanced chapters or few samples that don't work, I assure you that it's not as bad as I make it sound. I just thought it was fair to note these minor issues in case there was a 6th edition for OpenGL 5.0! I was worried about two things when I considered getting the 5th edition: (1) I already have the 4th edition so is this an incremental update or something completely new? And (2) if the book uses a library to hide some of the advanced features then does it spend a lot of time on that as opposed to teaching real OpenGL? The answer to the first question is that it's a completely new book that is exclusively about OpenGL 3.3. The answer to the second question is, like I said earlier, that the book library is there for a purpose, which is ultimately teaching you how to do things with nothing but OpenGL. I apologize for writing so much, I never wrote a book review before. :)

Shorter summary: buy the book!

Do NOT buy. See update below.

CONS:

> the book explains their custom toolkit, and not OpenGL itself.

1) I have to agree with this. There are some examples in Chapter 4 that are nothing but calls to their wrapper!

2) OpenGL 3.x and above is "all about shaders", but it takes them 7 chapters before they even bother to get around to discussing them.

3) The code examples aren't that good. Just lack of overall quality and most don't compile cleanly without a bunch of tinkering.

4) Author doesn't take feedback or bug reports to kindly :/

5) The author doesn't know his "target audience". Anyone learning OpenGL more than likely has some background and education in CS/Math - but he writes the book as if he is giving an "intro to 3d programming" to highschool kids. It's a really awkward disconnect and doesn't flow well.

6) It's called a "Super Bible", but doesn't live up to it's name. There are better documentation out there and think it is a bit arrogant of him to claim such a title for his book.

7) it's quite costly.

PROS:

1) The chapter on textures isn't bad. It is adequate if you never worked with them before.

2) The book it's self has nice binding/pages.

UPDATE:

1) When I say the code is bad, it's really bad. The project/build is disorganized worse than some "last minute" undergrad projects! Very unprofessional. Secondly, the further along with the book you go, the worse the code becomes! Starting around Chapter 9 the code is just broke unless you are willing to put in hours to debug, clean up and fix their mess. It is very clear they do not have a professional build manager on their team.

2) Their is no maintenance/updates for this book. The release the book and let the code rot. They have the source on google's code site, but there are dozens of bugs that have been outstanding for awhile without being addressed. Once they have your money they have no motivation to update their code (other than say, professional integrity and pride at a job well done; but guess that isn't enough these days). Even if you submit bug fixes, they don't/won't update the code for others.

I'll add one more PRO 3) It does try to cover the "new" stuff (programmable pipeline). Generally this is what you want in a book unless you have to maintain old code.

Lastly: In my opinion what they should of done was start off with a FULL version of a textured Hello Triangle in pure OpenGL and C (only using freeglut for window management) and then spent the next 5 chapters explaining each part of it. Seriously their wrapper was a bad idea. It's like if you were to get a book on how to use the Standard lib or Boost (or any other large API), but instead they wrap all the functionality in another API because they though it was to difficult to teach. The entire reason for buying the book is the understand it and use it effectively! You can't do either of those if you hide everything behind a wrapper!

**If you want to learn OpenGL, get one of these books:**

Far as I know, these are the only books covering the "new" programmable pipeline (ie, 3.x+):

OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide. - At chapter 2 they take you though "Hello Triangle" with REAL OpenGL code. ES is "close enough" to normal branch that if you understand it, you'll be able to easily convert your skills/code.

OpenGL Shading Language (3rd Edition) [the orange book] - Not an OpenGL book per say, but you will learn more about OpenGL in the first 4 "review" chapters than you will from this entire super bible. It's brief [in regards to opengl; not glsl], but comprehensive. They even tell you for certain the "new and correct" way of doing things (unlike SuperBible were it is fuzzy at times or even worse; using deprecated shaders like in chapter 8!)

I've heard bad things about the red book (see the amazon reviews); wait till they have a new edition (late 2011 I think).

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 26 reviews  3.4 out of 5 stars