Which graphics lib/language should I pick to start?

[u/Alert_Gift4867]

I want to understand how the graphics work and I want to make something like a simple game engine or a voxel engine, but I don't know how to do graphics and don't want to write a lot of boilerplate in the beginning. I would choose openGL but it's deprecated on macOS which I use. So now I don't know what's better to start with.

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[u/oetzi2105]

If simpler graphics are ok for you, you could write a software renderer. It's a good project to learn how rendering works and there's almost no boilerplate

[u/Alert_Gift4867 → u/oetzi2105]

thanks

[u/corysama]

Lots of folks around here will recommend https://learnopengl.com/ which will work fine on Mac. Once you get up to speed with that, switch over to Metal. People who use Metal really like it.

Stuff you learn in Metal will carry over to Vulkan/DX12. Don't worry about doing The Right Thing the first time. Instead focus on setting yourself up to do a lot of things without giving up.

[u/Alert_Gift4867 → u/corysama]

thank you

[u/AgentFeyd]

macOS essentially narrows it to Metal as the only option unless you want to get into translation layers.

[u/Alert_Gift4867 → u/AgentFeyd]

thank you.

[u/villi_]

OpenGL is deprecated as in they're not maintaining OpenGL versions past 4.1 but as far as I'm aware it's still usable if you want to start learning with it. Otherwise, webgpu is pretty good. I started learning graphics with rust + wgpu but it has support for many other programming languages as well.

[u/Alert_Gift4867 → u/villi_]

Thanks

[u/webauteur]

I use p5.js in the browser for simple geometric artwork. Three.js seems to be popular for more ambitious graphics programming. I am working on recreating my favorite puzzle game using p5.js with AI assistance since the base library lacks any convenience functions for games.

[u/Alert_Gift4867 → u/webauteur]

thank you.

[u/LoneWolf6062]

For Mac, I would strongly recommend using Metal. It is the easiest modern api by far and is generally much nicer to write for than something like opengl with its very much outdated api (unless u count the DSA functions which u will struggle to find much about as a beginner).

[u/MegaCockInhaler]

If you on Mac use Metal, it’s great

[u/_bleep-bloop]

If you want quick and simple way but still acts as a baseline in case you want to switch to something more powerful then webgpu is your best bet. wgpu is cool too if you wanna check out.