Guide to Game Development/Rendering and Game Engines/OpenGL/GLUT

GLUT (pronounced like the glut in gluttony) is the OpenGL Utility Toolkit, a window system independent toolkit for writing OpenGL programs. It implements a simple windowing application programming interface (API) for OpenGL. GLUT makes it considerably easier to learn about and explore OpenGL programming. GLUT provides a portable API so you can write a single OpenGL program that works across all PC and workstation OS platforms.

GLUT is not open source. Mark Kilgard maintains the copyright. There are a number of newer and open source alternatives.

Categories

• Basic 3D window creation

Code on how to create the basic perspective scene for 3D

• Basic 2D window creation

Code on how to create the basic orthographic scene for 2D

• Handling input

Functions used for handling: Mouse, Keyboard, etc.

• Packaging GLUT for export

How you can group glut for distribution to others.

About

GLUT supports:

• Multiple windows for OpenGL rendering
• Callback driven event processing
• Sophisticated input devices
• An 'idle' routine and timers
• A simple, cascading pop-up menu facility
• Utility routines to generate various solid and wire frame objects
• Support for bitmap and stroke fonts
• Miscellaneous window management functions

External links

• Glut webpage on the OpenGL website
• Glut on the Nate Robbins webpage
• Youtube Installation tutorial by Xoax.net