OpenGL in 2 Slides
OpenGL (www.opengl.org) is a software interface to graphics hardware. Mostly used for 2D and 3D graphics display.
About 150 commands to specify objects and operations.
The OpenGL Utility Library (GLU) provides commands for dealing with camera viewing parameters, tessellation of polygonal objects, and the creation of primitive geometrical surfaces.
The OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT) abstracts the creation of OpenGL windows and the handling of mouse and keyboard events for disparate platforms.
Simple OpenGL applications consist of:
- Initializing OpenGL and registering callbacks.
- Creating the primitive objects.
- Sending the primitive objects to the graphics pipeline.
- Drawing and looping for interactivity.
Most sophisticated multi-platform visualization APIs use OpenGL to render their 2D and 3D data.
The Model Viewer application (included in the SDK) uses OpenGL to render 3D geometry.