In the previous three chapters, we rendered 2D objects called sprites in our tiny Bazooka game using the Simple and Fast Media Library (SFML). At the core of SFML is OpenGL; this is used to render anything on screen, including 2D objects.
SFML does a great job of putting everything in a nice little package, and this allows us to get a 3D game going very quickly. However, in order to understand how a graphics library actually works, we need to learn how OpenGL works by delving deeper into how to use it so that we can render anything on the screen.
In this chapter, we will discover how to use a graphics library, such as OpenGL, in order to render 3D objects in any scene. We will cover the following topics:
- What is OpenGL?
- Creating our first OpenGL project
- Creating a window and ClearScreen
- Creating a Mesh class
- Creating a Camera class
- The Shaderloader...