Note, 2022: OpenGL and its successor Vulkan are deprecated/not-supported on Mac, which is instead using "Metal" as the graphics engine.
"Glitter is a dead simple boilerplate for OpenGL, intended as a starting point for the tutorials on learnopengl.com and open.gl. Glitter compiles and statically links every required library, so you can jump right into doing what you probably want: how to get started with OpenGL."
Glitter has a single dependency: cmake, which is used to generate platform-specific makefiles or project files. Start by cloning this repository, making sure to pass the --recursive flag to grab all the dependencies. If you forgot, then you can git submodule update --init instead.
git clone --recursive https://github.com/Polytonic/Glitter
cd Glitter
cd BuildNow generate a project file or makefile for your platform. If you want to use a particular IDE, make sure it is installed; don't forget to set the Start-Up Project in Visual Studio or the Target in Xcode.
# UNIX Makefile
cmake ..
# Mac OSX
cmake -G "Xcode" ..
# Microsoft Windows
cmake -G "Visual Studio 14" ..
cmake -G "Visual Studio 14 Win64" ..
...If you compile and run, you should now be at the same point as the Hello Window or Context Creation sections of the tutorials. Open main.cpp on your computer and start writing code!
Many people overlook how frustrating it is to install dependencies, especially in environments lacking package managers or administrative privileges. For beginners, just getting set up properly set up can be a huge challenge. Glitter is meant to help you overcome that roadblock.
Glitter provides the most basic windowing example. It is a starting point, and tries very hard not to enforce any sort of directory structure. Feel free to edit the include paths in CMakeLists.txt. Glitter bundles most of the dependencies needed to implement a basic rendering engine. This includes:
| Functionality | Library |
|---|---|
| Mesh Loading | assimp |
| Physics | bullet |
| OpenGL Function Loader | glad |
| Windowing and Input | glfw |
| OpenGL Mathematics | glm |
| Texture Loading | stb |
If you started the tutorials by installing SDL, GLEW, or SOIL, stop. The libraries bundled with Glitter supersede or are functional replacements for these libraries.
I have provided sample implementations of an intrusive tree mesh and shader class, if you're following along with the tutorials and need another reference point. These were used to generate the screenshot above, but will not compile out-of-the-box. I leave that exercise for the reader. 😃
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2015 Kevin Fung
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