learning open gl or not

Hi. Im just learning cpp. And I easily temp to study diffrant things. One of them is open gl (or directx). Do you think its necessery for me to learn it? Is it required for game development? If so what book do you recommend? Thanks in advance.
If your interested in creating 3D games with C++, you will need to learn OpenGL or DirectX. If your interested in just making 2D games to start, you will use something like SDL, Allegro, or SFML.

To start out on OpenGL, you can check out a tutorial site
http://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/OpenGL/
or
http://www.opengl-tutorial.org/

If your going to get a book, theres one big thing to think of.
OpenGL versions 3.2 and under are OUTDATED. Make sure your learning modern OpenGL code (3.3+)

Another big thing to find out, Is my graphics card up to date enough to run OpenGL 3.3

P.S. about 3 months ago, I was trying to start up OpenGL, and I has tons of problems, come to find out my computer wasn't able to run OpenGL 3.0 or higher

Another important factor is what you plan to target, i.e. just Windows or want to write on mobile devices, i.e. OpenGL is cross-platform whereas DirectX is Windows and Xbox only.


And OpenGL isn't 3D-only.

Start with SDL. You can use SDL with OpenGL, and for learning dealing with graphic, SDL will be easier.
And you could go with lazyfoo's tutorials, or NeHe(he's doing OpenGL thou), or any other :)
Ok. Its my first study about graphics. Maybe it's better to start with simpler thing. Is SDL usefull for opengl or I should learn from begining after sdl?
If you go to SDL website, you'll see projects that used it - games like Bastion... Half-life 2 and CS:S were ported to Linux by SDL.
And if you study SDL, then you'll know how to use graphics on PC - so you'll mainly learn new things with OpenGL... And as I said, you can use SDL + OpenGL to make things easier.

Cheers!
thanks. I think I should enter SDL world!
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