Welcome to Swiftless Tutorials. We have been around on the internet for the better part of 10 20 years!
It’s been a long time since I’ve updated the site. A couple of years ago I started adding a blog post here or there from my usual development journey, maybe a handful and I’m looking to continue this as I solve problems that don’t have solutions readily available online.
These days I’m working in the inventory and warehouse management space, architecting and implementing solutions with ASP.NET, Azure, .NET 9.0, MAUI and Blazor. Just a year ago I gave my first ever presentation at the ANDUG (Adelaide .NET User Group) conference in Adelaide, SA where I went way over time:
The site mainly features tutorials for OpenGL 2.x with the fixed function pipeline, some OpenGL 4.x which is shader based, GLSL to teach you how to use the shaders and a few other bits and bobs including some basic math, PhysX (back before Nvidia bought it, but still pretty relevant) and some introduction to terrain generation using VBOs. There’s also a minor WebGL appearance.
Writing the Version 2.0 tutorials (updating from 2008 to a nicer to read and more informative tutorial) has taken a while. Just recently at the end of 2024 I’ve found generative text models and am using them to help me push through rewriting things using my original tutorials as the source but in the style I started for the version 2.0s. I’m trying to heavily proof read these as I go.
While OpenGL 2.x is a long since gone and we’re now living in the age of Vulkan, I have actually started getting my tutorials working in .NET believe it or not. You can enjoy the initial fruits of my labour on my GitHub – while there is a wrapper that supports OpenGL 2.x I couldn’t find anything online about actually getting a legacy OpenGL pipeline running so after some trial and error here you go with the first 18 or so tutorials converted:
https://github.com/Swiftless/opengl_legacy_csharp
Good luck coding!
Swiftless
Really liked your tutorials. For first time I could actually write running programs in minimum lines. Only you have a simple tutorial to create a window from scratch for OpenGL 4.0 with nice shader binding class. Everybody else keeps rotating between glut and glfw.
Could you do a tutorial describing the transformation / rotation / projection / etc, matricies in depth, as well is how the 4th element of a point is used and what it should be set to?
Swiftless says, “I have been delayed in writing up the version 2.0 tutorials, as you can see I started them in the regular OpenGL section of the site.”
What “regular OpenGL section”? I see a tab ‘OpenGL’, but when I pull down on it, I see only OpenGL 4 and WebGL. No “regular” section.
Hey Matt,
It wasn’t until I read this that I realized that some people might not notice the OpenGL tab as being a button in itself to go to the OpenGL 2 tutorials or as I called it, the “regular” section. This has since been separated a little more.
Thanks,
Swiftless
Hi,
You made great tutorials for Beginner to Advanced programmers 🙂
Btw, do you have a plan to add tutorials for OpenGL ES 2.0 or newer? because it doesn’t have fixed pipeline anymore and everything need to be done using shaders, so it’s probably too difficult for beginners to learn by them self (even a simple program to render one triangle)
Anyway, keep up the good works 🙂
Sorry, i mean OpenGL ES for Windows, since there are a few middleware libraries that translate OpenGL ES to native OpenGL/Direct3D, and due to portability many programs are starting to use OpenGL ES for desktop and mobile platform.
i am drawing two cubes(solid) ,first the bigger one and then the smaller one inside but the smaller one is always visible though it is inside,i am not able to understand how to make a view in which it is not visible
Wellcome back!
Nice design btw. 🙂
[Basic Question] I want to create pool, can you show the simple code to show the water animation or whatever to show the water, please. Thanks b4
I want to create pool how can you show the simple code to show the water animation or whatever to show the water, please. Thanks b4
Looks slick, thanks for the update, and looking forward to your future updates!
Also I’d like to request an extended tutorial to openGL texture coordinate generation where you explain what these really are:
GL_TEXTURE_GEN_S
GL_TEXTURE_GEN_R
GL_TEXTURE_GEN_T
GL_TEXTURE_GEN_Q
and do the texture coordinate generation in the GLSL shader instead. If you can do that I’d appreicate it since its my understanding that openGL 3 does not support texture generation thru fixed pipeline anymore or does it? In that case it needs to be done in the shader. I’d appreciate if you explained more about this in tutorial or even responding here would be fine! 🙂
your previous theme was much better, I’m gonna miss it 🙂
Great source, thanks!
Great Work… really great work. i take lot of help from your tutorials. i start openGl just a week ago.. and your tutorials totally help me in building basics of openGl.by help Of God i will go further in OpenGl..But In this field i remember your tutorials. May god help you .Great Work keep it up.