This book is broken down into a number of general subjects. Each subject contains several numbered chapters called tutorials. Each tutorial describes several related concepts. In virtually every case, each concept is demonstrated by a companion set of code.

Each tutorial begins with an overview of the concepts that will be discussed and demonstrated. At the end of each tutorial is a review section and a glossary of all terms introduced in that tutorial. The review section will explain the concepts presented in the tutorial. It will also contain suggestions for playing with the source code itself; these are intended to further your understanding of these concepts. If the tutorial introduced new OpenGL functions or functions for the OpenGL shading language, they will be reviewed here as well.

This is a book for beginning graphics programmers. Graphics is a huge topic, and this book will not cover every possible effect, feature, or technique. This book will also not cover every technique in full detail. Sometimes techniques will be revisited in later materials, but there simply isn't enough space to say everything about everything. Therefore, when certain techniques are introduced, there will be a section at the end providing some cursory examination of more advanced techniques. This will help you further your own research into graphics programming, as you will know what to search for online or in other books.

Each tutorial ends with a glossary of all of the terms defined in that tutorial.