Video tutorials on the net

XoaX.net has some really interesting tutorials and are well made. They range from neural nets to openGL to mathematics to programming.

I have been adding and testing these things with antfarmgl, and below is a textured cube inside a torus, which is instantiated with a generated list. The reason for this is the performance speed.

theTorus = glGenLists (1);
glNewList(theTorus, GL_COMPILE);
torus(48, 48);
glEndList();

The code is the method to use the calling function and it is accessed with:

   glCallList(theTorus);

I decided I would create my own procedure for creating a torus so that I could test my skill at three dimensional reasoning and implementing that thought in an actual application. It was actually very simple and I devised a method which used the sin() and cos() of two different variables to assign x,y,z values to the equation of a torus. I encountered one problem in generating the finished product. The method of specifiying quadStrips in openGL ran counter-intuitively to my way of guessing its vertex order. It uses the vertices in a manner similar to a triangle fan and I suppose if it is faster in the GPU then I don't care, as long as it works in some consistent manner.

I can now create .obj files from things created in my program, import to blender, export from blender and generate, or apply the same techniques in Python or edit the .obj and .mtl files as ascii.