How To: Add lighting to 3D scenes with OpenGL for C++

By now, you should know a few of the basics of programming with OpenGL and GLUT for C++ developing, like shapes, transformations, timers, and colors. Now it's time for lighting. Everything could look right in your 3D program or game, but if you're lighting isn't right, it's a sad world for all of us. This video lesson will show you how to add lighting to 3D scenes with OpenGL for C++, so you can start making your own 3D programs.

Learn how to add light sources to add realism to a 3D scene, making a box-shaped object, with the top and bottom removed. It's all about ambient lighting, which is sort of like light that's shining everywhere. In the real world, there's no such thing, but in computer graphics, it's really hard to simulate light sources so well that no surface is completely unlit, so we use ambient lighting to simplify our life.

*Get the text version of this lesson.
*Download the source code.
*Try out the exercises.

Check out the other videos in this video series.