Greetings all, I thought I''d post some of the books that I''ve found most useful over the years and allow others to post their suggestions as well so as to give each other ideas of possible additions. OpenGL Redbook - Woo, Neider, Davism Shreiner - Addison Wesley Code Compelete - Steve McConnell - Microsoft Programming and Problem Solving with C++ - Dale, Weems, Headington - Jones and Bartlett Data Structures via C++ : Objects by Evolution - Berman - Oxford Those are the books that I consider most instrumental in my development so far. Enough can''t be said for some good math texts as well. I know alot of people don''t use windoze, and some that don''t, don''t use VC++, but, there''s a lot to be said about it''s support and ease of developemnt, but that''s just my personal opinion. Especially the online help! thanks, bosco() -- leader of the free world .. or something ..

I''ve heard the OpenGL Super bible is really good.

I don''t know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future.

hey man, where can I find that book? really though, my two best reference books are The OpenGL Superbible, and The Black Art of 3D Game Programming, (the second half of the book mostly).

JoeMont001@aol.com www.polarisoft.n3.net

I know the author of the SuperBible.... Its definately a great book but it falls short on a few things. For one glTexGen() uses, ie. Environment Mapping, also I dont think it shows how to use the Accumulation Buffer to draw a motion blur

-TipTup
TipTup.Com

I definitely think that anyone interested in C++ get the Straustrup book "The C++ Programming Language". Its quite technical, so it might not be for a beginner (though if you take your time I wouldn''t see a real problem). Most especially, the people who didn''t learn C++ from the Straustrup book should get it. For starters, it uses the STL all the way through the book. Everyone should be familiar with the STL. It is portable, it is efficient, and it can save a huge amount of development time. Some people see the STL as hairy only because they learned C++ without it, its truly not very complicated at all to use.

As for OpenGL, I would steer people away from the OpenGL Superbible unless there is a new edition from the one I got. The one I have only covers up to OpenGL 1.1. It doesn''t cover things like DrawArrayElement(), or anything like that. I think the best bet is the Red Book for learning OpenGL coding, the Blue Book for your reference, and lots of online tutorials for the advanced stuff, the whole area of graphics programming moves far too quickly for any book to completely capture.

Also, you should learn the API of whatever system you are working on. If its Windows, "Windows Programming" by Charles Petzold is the bible. Try to stay away from GLUT, eventually you will need to do something complicated that the API has a simple function for, but you won''t be able to throw it in to the middle of a GLUT program, you''ll have to go back and do everything with the API. I started with GLUT under X and it was quite helpful, but I find I have a much deeper understanding of what my programs are doing using the API even if I do copy and paste a lot of the API stuff from previous shells I''ve made. (window creation stuff is generally the same, no need to lookup the syntax and all the class parameters and junk every time)



-----------------------
Go for it.
OtakuCODE