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one topic that has always been of highest interest to me is 3D Programming. I've made several attempts at programming small games and never really successed. After experiences with DirectX and C++, XNA and C#, as well as Unity3d and C#, I would like to try OpenGL. Just being curious. When using C++ the way to go is rather clear. However Java (and Scala that I'm currently learning), Python ... are way more comfortable. After about 2 years of struggling with C++ without any remarkable success, I turned away from it. Now for Java/Scala/... there are many OpenGL bindings and I would like to choose the right one. On the contrary there are few books on them. Java 3d and/or JOGL books are available but when looking at Scala or Python things aren't that good.

What layer/wrapper/binding would you recommend (Java or Scala). Is there a kind of standard ?

Is it possible to learn this binding by reading for eyample "OpenGL Superbible" ? If not, can you recommend a book ?

Any advice is welcome. If there's a good IDE (plugin), tool, website, tutorial, ... please let me know it.

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  • You might want to make that an answer. Commented Dec 9, 2010 at 22:04
  • "when looking at Scala or Python things aren't that good" -- since Scala runs on the JVM and interoperates with Java, it's quite common to use Java libraries/bindings from Scala. Thus, the Java books should be helpful references for either Java or Scala. Commented Dec 9, 2010 at 22:06
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    On the Python side Pygame works pretty well to get started with. Very simple. If the lib you use is a straight binding to OpenGL then any book about the C interface should be fine- the transformation from your language's syntax to the C syntax should be pretty predictable. But I would also suggest that you might want to get started with a higher level library than OpenGL, depending on what you want to do. OpenGL is sort of an assembly language for graphics. For a lot of things it is much easier to work with some sort of scenegraph library. Commented Dec 12, 2010 at 22:25

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I have used JOGL in many of my 3D projects. Learning how to use a binding is not as important as learning the actual api. Using opengl in c and java are pretty much the same. The only thing that differs is the way you set up your rendering windows and buffers. I use netbeans ide with the opengl for netbeans plugin because it sets everything up for you and all you have to worry about is the opengl part. To learn opengl any book is fine. If you have a good background in programming then you should catch on quite easily.

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Thank you. The plugin is quite helpful
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As for Scala bindings, there's the scalagl project, but I didn't try to use it yet.

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or finished. it’s so small that the author may simply have decided not to add more.

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