OpenGL Installation

You probably already have OpenGL on your machine. However, the operating system may not have set you up with the best version of the graphics driver for your particular hardware. You don't want to be stuck with OpenGL 1.X! We'd like to have at least OpenGL 3.2.

So make sure you have recent graphic card drivers. Download the specific driver for your card from NVidia, ATI, or Intel rather than the default Linux or Microsoft Windows driver.

WARNING: OpenGL features beyond OpenGL 1.1 generally do not work over Remote Desktop.

Graphics Libraries Installation

For the homeworks you'll need to install the following libraries:

• GLFW (for creating & managing OpenGL contexts)

• GLEW (The OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library)

• GLM (OpenGL Mathematics)

Please follow the detailed instructions below for each OS.

Linux (Fedora or Ubuntu/Debian)

• Download the GLFW source code zip (at least 3.0.4) from
  http://www.glfw.org/download.html

  Unzip the archive into some directory

  cd to that directory and type these commands:

      mkdir build 
      cd build						      
      cmake .. 
      make 
      sudo make install 
  

• [Ubuntu/Debian]

      apt-get install glew-utils libglew-dev
  

  [Fedora]

      yum install glew-utils libglew-dev
  

• GLM is a header only C++ library. Grab a recent zip file from
  http://glm.g-truc.net/ under Downloads.

  Extract the compressed file, which makes a glm folder. Inside of that folder is another glm folder. Copy the inner glm folder to /usr/local/include (using sudo).

Mac OSX - 10.7 (Lion) or later

• Download the GLFW source code zip (at least 3.0.4) from
  http://www.glfw.org/download.html

  Unzip the archive into some directory

  cd to that directory and type these commands:

      mkdir build 
      cd build						      
      cmake .. 
      make
      sudo make install 
  

• We recommend the Homebrew package manager. After brew is installed, just type:

      brew install glew
      brew install glm
  

Windows

• Create a new folder on your machine named "C:\GraphicsLibraries\"
  and subfolders named:

  • "C:\GraphicsLibraries\include\"
    
  • "C:\GraphicsLibraries\include\GL\"
    
  • "C:\GraphicsLibraries\include\GLFW\"
    
  • "C:\GraphicsLibraries\lib\"
    
  • "C:\GraphicsLibraries\bin\"
    

• Download and unzip the following files and place them as instructed below.
  NOTE: Make sure you are consistent and grab either all 64-bit or all 32-bit versions of the libraries.

  • Download a recent zip of the GLM headers (a headers only libraries) from http://glm.g-truc.net/ under "Downloads". Extract the compressed file, which makes a glm folder. Inside of that folder is another glm folder. Copy the inner glm folder to "C:\GraphicsLibraries\".

    To check: The file "glm.hpp" should be in this folder "C:\GraphicsLibraries\glm\"
    

  • Download the GLFW Windows binaries (probably 64-bit) from http://www.glfw.org/download.html and unzip the files.

    Put "glfw3.h" and "glfw3native.h" in "C:\GraphicsLibraries\include\GLFW\"
    Put "glfw3.lib" in "C:\GraphicsLibraries\lib\"

  • Download the GLEW Windows binaries from http://glew.sourceforge.net/ and unzip the files.

    Put "glew.h" and "glxew.h" "wglew.h" into "C:\GraphicsLibraries\include\GL\"
    Put "glew32.lib" and "glew32s.lib" in "C:\GraphicsLibraries\lib\"
    Put "glew32.dll" and "glew32s.lib" in "C:\GraphicsLibraries\bin\"

• Edit the "PATH" variable for your account (not the system variables) to append the location of the dynamic libraries (dll's) "C:\GraphicsLibraries\bin\". (Google search if you don't know how to do this already). You might need to make a new variable if you don't already have a PATH.

• The CMakeLists.txt line in each homework:

  set(CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH ${CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH} "C:\\GraphicsLibraries")
  

  points your compilation at these directories. You could choose to put all of the downloaded library files in another location, and then specify the new path on the command line when building each project for the first time, e.g.:

  cmake ../src -D CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="${CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH} C:\\My\\Path\\Here"