Description
This course covers the fundamentals of computer graphics programming using WebGL2. In the course, we will walk together in two complementary and interleaving tracks. The first track will cover the mathematical foundations of computer graphics. This will include illustrations, examples, and proofs. I do not require you to have strong mathematical background for this as I will illustrate almost everything you need. You only need to know simple basics such as matrices, vectors, dot products, and cross products. The second track will cover the conversion of these concepts into actual code implementation. In this track, you will learn how to manipulate your graphics card (GPU) to perform the required graphics calculations for you. You will learn how to write code that runs directly on the GPU (using GLSL ), and how to communicate with it using your code that runs on the CPU (using JavaScript). Again I do not require you to even know JavaScript although it certainly will help. I do require you, however, to have good knowledge of at least one programming language. Words like variables, arrays, functions, or objects must be familiar to you.
That said, those two tracks are not delivered one after the other. Instead, they are interleaved. I lay the theoretical and mathematical foundation for some concept, and then follow up by the practical implementation in code. Then repeat.
While this course focuses on graphics programming on the web, you will actually find this course equally useful if you wish to learn computer graphics fundamentals on any other platform, and you will be able to switch with minimum effort. WebGL is only a tool.
This course is a low-level programming course. You will send the required data to the GPU byte by byte. While this will not make you able to create the best game ever in 3 minutes, it will certainly help you gain deep knowledge that you will find extremely useful when you take the next step forwards, as you will actually know what really does happen behind the scene when you use a higher level library in your production code later.
If you encounter any problems of any kind during watching the course, please let me know instantly. I will be quite responsive, and my response will vary from answering in text, supplying more code examples and illustrative articles, to actually re-recording entire videos and supplementary content just for you!
This course is only the beginning. I will follow up with more advanced courses quite soon. Enjoy!
Who is the target audience?
Any programmer interested in computer graphics, specially but not necessarily on the web.
Any web developer who wants to add 3D graphics to his websites as a sort of astonishing styling.
Anyone interested in understanding the low level internals of how the graphics pipeline works.
Anyone interested in the mathematics of computer graphics.
Any High-level game developer who wants to dig deeper into understanding what really happens behind the scene in his high-level code
Requirements
You should be familiar with at least one programming language – preferably but not necessarily JavaScript.
You should have simple understanding of basic vectors, matrices, dot products and cross products.