Since its first release in 1992, OpenGL has been rapidly adopted as the graphics API of choice for real-time interactive 3D graphics applications. The OpenGL state machine is easy to understand, but its simplicity and orthogonality enable a multitude of interesting effects. The goal of this course is to demonstrate how to generate more satisfying images using OpenGL. There are three general areas of discussion: generating aesthetically pleasing or realistic looking basic images, computing interesting effects, and generating more sophisticated images.
We have assumed that the attendees have a strong working knowledge of OpenGL. As much as possible we have tried to include interesting examples involving only those commands in the most recent version of OpenGL, version 1.1, but we have not restricted ourselves to this version of OpenGL. OpenGL is an evolving standard and we have taken the liberty of incorporating material that uses some multivendor extensions and some vendor specific extensions. The course notes include reprints of selected papers describing rendering techniques relevant to OpenGL, but may refer to other APIs such as OpenGL's predecessor, Silicon Graphics' IRIS GL. For new material developed for the course notes we use terminology and notation consistent with other OpenGL documentation.