Reddit reviews OpenGL Shading Language (3rd Edition)

You are definitely going to be the rate limiter learning anything so no tutorial or book is going to be much faster than the next. If you understand all of the core concepts of shading languages, then I'd say you should pick up a reference book:

http://www.amazon.com/OpenGL-Shading-Language-Randi-Rost/dp/0321637631/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Or go straight to the reference documentation here:

http://www.opengl.org/documentation/glsl/

If you don't know OpenGL that well and need a more comprehensive graphics programming start I'd strongly recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/OpenGL-SuperBible-Comprehensive-Tutorial-Reference/dp/0321712617/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1302142851&sr=8-2

I finished an introductory graphics course last semester and, just like your course, we only learnt the fixed function pipeline. Currently, I'm learning modern OpenGL by myself and the first thing you need to do is "rid" yourself of the fixed function pipeline.

As mentioned by tjgrant, there's /r/opengl. Their top link for learning modern OpenGL is Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming by Jason L. McKesson, and amongst all the resources on the internet I have found so far, it is by far the clearest and most thorough introduction to modern OpenGL.

Work through every single exercise, even if it may seem dull or simple because you probably have done the first few chapters in your course. There are some eye-opening chapters (if you are new to graphics programming like I am), like Chapter 3 which shows you 3 ways to calculate vertex transformations with the programmable pipeline - from an almost purely CPU implementation to a purely shader implementation - that ends with a discussion on performance.

Simply working on the programmable pipeline and realizing how much has already been done for you in the fixed function pipeline will give you a much better understanding of how the interactions work, so no worries about that.

The OpenGL "orange book" is also invaluable as a reference, but I don't think it's a good place to start. It obviously has the GLSL spec, but a major portion of the book are shader examples to achieve effects such as shadows and antialiasing.

Some other interesting tutorials include Anton Gerdelan's OpenGL 4 tutorials and the Lighthouse3D tutorials linked by dyyl.

You might want to stop relying on GLUT/FreeGLUT if you want to build something more substantial than an OpenGL demo and start using something like SDL, because GLUT is very old and does allow you to write your own rendering loop, among other problems due to its simplicity. The tradeoff is SDL is slightly more complex than GLUT.

If you want to learn glsl http://www.lighthouse3d.com/ has some good tutorials and the glsl orange book is very good for more in depth http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0321637631.

You should consider checking out the OpenGL "Orange book," ie. OpenGL Shading Language. It's pretty much THE book to know when writing your own shader. Some of the information is a little bit dated, for example, it doesn't give specific examples on normal maps, but it teaches the fundamentals behind normal maps. It's an incredibly useful reference.

Superbible

This should be really good and the most important of the following books. I ordered it on the 25th and it comes tomorrow. It is more like a tutorial or a guide than just a reference.

Official Reference

This is more a reference as far as I know. This is the official book so I think that you'll find more deep informations in this book. The Superbible could contain some nice tricks as well.

Shading language!

For the shading language. Has a few pictures in it so it could be good for some shaders.

I got these book from a guy on IRC. He said he wrote some driver stuff for Apple and made the planet and asteroids demo on the WWDC. I don't know if I can believe him but I felt like he is a clever OpenGL guy and the whole IRC channel said so as well.

BTW: Don't buy OpenGL 4.x stuff. Apple hasn't even implemented OpenGL 3 completely.

It looks like the blog you linked to is using mostly meshes generated versus actual light calculations or fancy shaders - which makes sense.

If you're interested in learning GLSL there are some options out there such as the OpenGL orange book ( OpenGL Shading Language (3rd Edition) ) https://www.amazon.com/OpenGL-Shading-Language-Randi-Rost/dp/0321637631