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OpenGL ES is the industry’s leading software interface and graphics library for rendering sophisticated 3D graphics on handheld and embedded devices. OpenGL ES is the standard graphics API used for mobile and embedded systems.
To learn OpenGL ES we have compiled this list of 7 Best OpenGL ES Books. These resources will help you excel at 2D and 3D graphics, and they are suitable for beginners, intermediate learners as well as experts. Many professionals have already benefited from this compilation, hope you do too!
Best OpenGL ES Books You Should Read
- Our #1 Choice: OpenGL ES 3.0 Programming Guide
- Best Value Pick: Introduction to Computer Graphics with OpenGL ES
- Best Budget Pick: Learning OpenGL ES for iOS
1. OpenGL ES 3.0 Programming Guide
The newest version, OpenGL ES 3.0, makes it possible to create stunning visuals for new games and apps, without compromising device performance or battery life.
In the OpenGL ES 3.0 Programming Guide, the authors cover the entire API and Shading Language. They carefully introduce OpenGL ES 3.0 features such as shadow mapping, instancing, multiple render targets, uniform buffer objects, texture compression, program binaries, and transform feedback.
Through detailed, downloadable C-based code examples, you’ll learn how to set up and program every aspect of the graphics pipeline. Step by step, you’ll move from introductory techniques all the way to advanced per-pixel lighting and particle systems.
Throughout, you’ll find cutting-edge tips for optimizing performance, maximizing efficiency with both the API and hardware, and fully leveraging OpenGL ES 3.0 in a wide spectrum of applications.
What’s Inside:
- EGL API: communicating with the native windowing system, choosing configurations, and creating rendering contexts and surfaces
- Shaders: creating and attaching shader objects; compiling shaders; checking for compile errors; creating, linking, and querying program objects; and using source shaders and program binaries
- OpenGL ES Shading Language: variables, types, constructors, structures, arrays, attributes, uniform blocks, I/O variables, precision qualifiers, and invariance
- Geometry, vertices, and primitives: inputting geometry into the pipeline, and assembling it into primitives
- 2D/3D, Cubemap, Array texturing: creation, loading, and rendering; texture wrap modes, filtering, and formats; compressed textures, sampler objects, immutable textures, pixel unpack buffer objects, and mipmapping
- Fragment shaders: multitexturing, fog, alpha test, and user clip planes
- Fragment operations: scissor, stencil, and depth tests; multisampling, blending, and dithering
- Framebuffer objects: rendering to offscreen surfaces for advanced effects
- Advanced rendering: per-pixel lighting, environment mapping, particle systems, image post-processing, procedural textures, shadow mapping, terrain, and projective texturing
- Sync objects and fences: synchronizing within host application and GPU execution
2. Introduction to Computer Graphics with OpenGL ES
OpenGL ES is the standard graphics API used for mobile and embedded systems. Despite its widespread use, there is a lack of material that addresses the balance of both theory and practice in OpenGL ES. JungHyun Han’s Introduction to Computer Graphics with OpenGL ES achieves this perfect balance.
Han’s depiction of theory and practice illustrates how 3D graphics fundamentals are implemented. Theoretical or mathematical details around real-time graphics are also presented in a way that allows readers to quickly move on to practical programming.
Additionally, this book presents OpenGL ES and shader code on many topics. Industry professionals, as well as, students in Computer Graphics and Game Programming courses will find this book of importance.
Key Features:
- Presents key graphics algorithms that are commonly employed by state-of-the-art game engines and 3D user interfaces
- Provides a hands-on look at real-time graphics by illustrating OpenGL ES and shader code on various topics
- Depicts troublesome concepts using elaborate 3D illustrations so that they can be easily absorbed
- Includes problem sets, solutions manual, and lecture notes for those wishing to use this book as a course text.
3. OpenGL ES 3.0 Cookbook
If you are new to OpenGL ES or have some experience in 3D graphics, then this book will be extremely helpful in raising your expertise level from a novice to professional. The book implements more than 90 recipes to solve everyday challenges, helping you transition from a beginner to a professional.
This Book explore exciting new features of OpenGL ES 3.0 on textures, geometry, shaders, buffer objects, frame buffers and a lot more using GLSL 3.0 Master intermediate and advance cutting edge rendering techniques, including procedural shading, screen space technique and shadows with scene graphs. A practical approach to build the font engine with multilingual support and learn exciting imaging processing and post process techniques.
What You Will Learn
- Learn the essentials and exciting new features of OpenGL ES 3.0
- Discover the physics behind fundaments of light and material concepts with easy-to-follow examples
- Scratch the fragments with procedural shaders and learn how they work
- Master the basics of texturing, use compressed textures, and learn numerous mapping techniques
- Manage complex scenes with scene graphs and learn post-processing and image-processing techniques
- Build your font engine with multilingual support
- Master the working of recognized anti-aliasing techniques and implement FXAA and adaptive anti-aliasing
4. Getting Started with OpenGL ES 3+ Programming
You will learn the basics of rendering 2D/3D graphics using modern OpenGL ES 3+ and SDL2 (which works on both desktop and mobile devices).
This book will take you from zero through to rendering 3D texture-mapped objects with lighting. By the time you’re done you’ll have the fundamentals of modern OpenGL down, and will be ready for bigger things.
You’ll get the most out of these tutorials if you also have the “Modern Graphics Programming Primer” book, which is designed to support the tutorials series.
Also Check:
5. Learning OpenGL ES for iOS: A Hands-on Guide to Modern 3D Graphics Programming
If you’ve written C or C++ code and know object-oriented programming basics, this title brings together everything you need to fully master OpenGL ES graphics for iOS–including downloadable examples specifically designed to jumpstart your own projects.
OpenGL ES technology underlies the user interface and graphical capabilities of Apple’s iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad–as well as devices ranging from video-game consoles and aircraft-cockpit displays to non-Apple smartphones. In this friendly, thorough introduction, Erik M. Buck shows how to make the most of Open GL ES in Apple’s iOS environment.
This highly anticipated title focuses on modern, efficient approaches that use the newest versions of OpenGL ES, helping you avoid the irrelevant, obsolete, and misleading techniques that litter the Internet. Buck embraces Objective-C and Cocoa Touch, showing how to leverage Apple’s powerful, elegant GLKit framework to maximize your productivity, achieve tight platform integration, and deliver exceptionally polished apps.
6. Learn OpenGL ES: For Mobile Game and Graphics Development
Want to create sophisticated games and graphics-intensive apps? Learn OpenGL ES gets you started immediately with OpenGL ES. After mastering the basics of OpenGL ES itself, you will quickly find yourself writing and building game apps, without having to learn about object oriented programming techniques.
This book demonstrates the use of a powerful open-source modeling tool, Blender. You will be guided, step by step, through the development of Tank Fence, a dynamic, interactive 3D game. Along the way you’ll gain skills in building apps with Eclipse and the Android SDK or NDK, rendering graphics using hardware acceleration, and multithreading for performance and responsiveness. iOS developers will also find this book’s information invaluable when writing their apps.
What You Will Learn:
- Creating simple, efficient game UIs
- Designing the basic building blocks of an exciting, interactive 3D game
- Pulling all the elements together with Blender, a powerful open-source tool for modeling, animation, rendering, compositing, video editing, and game creation
- Taking the next big step using custom and inbuilt functions, texturing, shading, light sources, and more
- Refining your mobile game app through collision detection, player-room-obstacle classes, and storage classes
- Doing all this efficiently on mobile devices with limited resources and processing
7. Mobile 3D Graphics: with OpenGL ES and M3G
Graphics and game developers must learn to program for mobility. This book will teach you how.
This book provides a comprehensive but practical and easily understood introduction for any software engineer seeking to delight the consumer with rich 3D interactive experiences on their phone.
The exploding popularity of mobile computing is undeniable. From cell phones to portable gaming systems, the global demand for multifunctional mobile devices is driving amazing hardware and software developments. 3D graphics are becoming an integral part of these ubiquitous devices, and as a result, Mobile 3D Graphics is arguably the most rapidly advancing area of the computer graphics discipline.
Mobile 3D Graphics is about writing real-time 3D graphics applications for mobile devices. The programming interfaces explained and demonstrated in this must-have reference enable dynamic 3D media on cell phones, GPS systems, portable gaming consoles and media players.
The text begins by providing thorough coverage of background essentials, then presents detailed hands-on examples, including extensive working code in both of the dominant mobile APIs, OpenGL ES and M3G.
C/C++ and Java Developers, graphic artists, students, and enthusiasts would do well to have a programmable mobile phone on hand to try out the techniques described in this book. Along the way, readers will benefit from the hundreds of included tips, tricks and caveats.
