Good extensible project that will help me learn theoretical computer graphics? [closed]

Question

I never got to take a computer graphics course in university, but I want to have a thorough understanding of everything you'd learn in that course. I figure the best way to learn is through practice (programming).

If I were to start an OpenGL program from scratch, and slowly build it up to add new features to understand all of the concepts, what would I cover? And what would be a good project to demonstrate this?

Answer 1

I'm the author of a series of tutorial on the subject :

http://www.opengl-tutorial.org/

Regarding your question on the concepts you'll learn, the table of contents can give you a good idea :

Basic OpenGL

Tutorial 1 : Opening a window
Tutorial 2 : The first triangle
Tutorial 3 : Matrices
Tutorial 4 : A Colored Cube
Tutorial 5 : A Textured Cube
Tutorial 6 : Keyboard and Mouse
Tutorial 7 : Model loading
Tutorial 8 : Basic shading

Intermediate Tutorials

Tutorial 9 : VBO Indexing
Tutorial 10 : Transparency
Tutorial 11 : 2D text
Tutorial 13 : Normal Mapping
Tutorial 14 : Render To Texture

Miscellaneous

Math Cheatsheet
Useful Tools & Links

Tutorial 12 is done by sb else and is not crucial; Tutorials 15 & 16 are on their way ( baked & real-time shadows )

Of course, you have to keep in mind that you can't get a 'thorough understanding of everything' without a big book. I suggest Real-Time Rendering 3 for a broad, but often not in-depth discussion of, well, almost everything, and an additional math book like Essential Mathematics for Games and Interactive Applications.

What's more, I second walkytalky's proposition of making a FPS from scratch. That's basically what we all did.