Example code from the OpenGL 4.0 Shading Language Cookbook

This is the example programs from the OpenGL 4.0 Shading Language Cookbook, by David Wolff. The source code has been updated to work with MS Visual Studio, and no longer requires Qt.

Requirements

To use these examples, you'll need the following:

• The latest version of the Unofficial OpenGL Software Development Kit (GLSDK), available at http://glsdk.sourceforge.net.
• You'll also need the clever and useful tool premake.
• In order to use the examples in Chapter 8, you'll need at least version 0.9.3 of GLM. Unfortunately, at this time, the GLSDK includes version 0.9.2.x of GLM. However, it is easy to substitute a newer version (see below).

Compiling the examples

These examples have been fully tested with Visual Studio 2010. I hope to have them working with other compilers soon. Your help is welcome! Fork this project on github.

1. Install the GLSDK by following the instructions on their web site. In the process, you'll also install premake.
2. If you want to use the examples in Chapter 8, install the latest version of GLM into the GLSDK. You can do so by removing the glm directory and replacing it with the contents of the GLM zip file. Make sure to change the directory name to just glm.
3. Download the example code from github. Unzip to an appropriate directory.
4. Edit the premake4.lua file to point to your GLSDK's links.lua file.
5. Run premake4 vs2010 to generate the project and solution files.
6. Open the solution in Visual Studio, and compile!

Any problems, create an issue on github.

Changes from the book

At the time the book was written, I thought that using Qt would make the examples quite portable and easy to compile within Qt Creator. Unfortunately, Qt Creator has changed since the time of the writing of the book. It has become more unwieldy to install, and in my experience has become extremely slow to boot. In addition, it is not widely used.

Secondly, since the time of the book's writing, I have experienced problems with GLEW under a 4.0 core profile. When doing some research it appears that there are some fundemental issues with GLEW and core profiles.

Due to the above issues, and to make the code more available and hopefully easier to use, I have ported the code over to use GLLoad and FreeGLUT via the GLSDK. The code has been fully tested and compiles in VisualStudio 2010, and will soon (hopefully) be tested with the GNU compiler chain under Linux.

The major changes are listed below:

• Dropped dependence on Qt.
• Uses FreeGLUT, GLM, GLLoad, and GLImage via the GLSDK.
• Dropped dependence on libnoise for Chapter 8 examples. Instead, uses the noise functions available in GLM > 0.9.3.

TODO

• Currently, the noise examples (Chapter 8) don't look quite right due to the move to GLM. Fix noise examples (chapter 8) to look better.