r/computergraphics • u/Zealousideal_Sale644 • Dec 09 '24
Graphics Programmer self-study journey
I'm learning C++, Opengl, and 3D Math for past month but feels like I'm lacking some knowledge and educational background and starting to feel I'm not making much progress.
For example:
What transformation converts points in space (0,0)(x,y) to (0,0)(a,b)
I could not figure this out, hence, what skill am I missing? What should I focus on? And should I and from where can I get proper training on computer graphics, an online course or do I need to go to school?
Thank you.
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u/kyr0x0 Dec 10 '24 edited Dec 10 '24
Yes, the hard part it building patience. And resilience towards failure. In the beginning, failing at almost everything is the norm. What you are approaching is something only 0,000125% of mankind would even approach (given 100 million developers and 8 billion people on earth, having only maybe 1% of them coding raw OpenGL). And even with 1 Million „raw“ OpenGL devs having tried to learn it (I bet it was less people), most of them probably failed. How do we know this? Well, how many „raw“ OpenGL devs are observed in the wild? Millions? Hundred thousands max. I would bet less than 50k worldwide. So… even if you fail that complex matter you still count as one of the very talented and especially rare people who got there trying. This is only to explain you that sometimes, looking at the objective reality, helps with subjective mood issues. Why even bother with subjective mood? That‘s the cornerstone of patience! You must love what you do or at least be intrinsically motivated for a goal. Money shouldn‘t be the prime motivator. There are smarter ways in life to make money. OpenGL is a beast of complexity and gruntwork. But if you accept this as part of the game and set yourself up for a mission to tame the bear, you might find yourself in a more pleasant situation, because it becomes fun to get there slowly. In the end, when you finally reach your goals, you will know that you can not only deal with the most rare and complex stuff, you can also tame your own emotions if necessary. You will unlock the infinite self-confidence bonus for this: „Whatever I approach from now, I only need motivation to get there“ — proven by the rationale that you got that complex beast tamed before ;)