Flipping the learning process of Computer Graphics - from Blender to OpenGL...

 In learning, experimentation matters...

Let’s be honest—OpenGL is cool. When you write a few lines of code and see a triangle pop up on screen, it feels like magic.

But OpenGL is also:

• Verbose

• Abstract

• Unforgiving

• Missing a lot of concepts critical to modern 3D (like bones, animations, UVs)

So beginners often spend weeks struggling with:

• Boilerplate setup

• Matrix math

• VBOs/VAOs and shaders

• Texture mapping

• 3D model loading

All before they see something that even remotely resembles a 3D object.

Flipping the Process: Start With Blender

Blender is a powerful 3D creation suite. Within hours of learning the UI, you can:

• Model a character or environment

• Apply textures and materials

• Animate movement

• Export to .obj or .gltf

You’re now creating real 3D data, not just rendering a colored cube.

By learning Blender first, you naturally discover:

• What a mesh is (vertices, edges, faces)

• What UV unwrapping and texture mapping mean

• How bones and rigs drive animation

• How to export models into formats like .obj, .gltf, or .fbx

These concepts make OpenGL easier to understand later, because you've already seen them in action.

Once you've exported a model from Blender, you're in the perfect position to ask:

“How does a program actually draw this model?”

Now when you load a .obj file in OpenGL:

• You already know what the vertex positions, normals, and UVs are.

• You understand what the model should look like.

• You can visually debug your rendering pipeline.

Instead of building triangles from scratch, you're parsing real-world geometry you created yourself.

This gives you:

• Purpose: you're not just drawing test shapes.

• Context: you know what the data represents.

• Validation: you can check if OpenGL renders what you saw in Blender.

My young son Ridit is just doing this. He has taken a less travelled road in learning Computer Graphics. Instead of learning OpenGL first, he mastered 3D skills using Blender. This opens the door of "whats" of computer graphics. Now he is delving into OpenGL... this is opening up the door of "hows".

So his transformation is from a 3D engineer to computer graphics programmer...

This is how my son Ridit started exploring Blender when he was barely 9 years old.

This is his experimentation with OpenGL...

And here is another...

But he mastered three programming languages - namely Java, Python and C++ before doing such experimentation.

Here we go - the path from Blender to OpenGL...

📌 Blender Concept → OpenGL Implementation:

Blender Concept	OpenGL Equivalent
Meshes & Objects	Vertex Buffers (VBO, VAO)
Transformations	glm::translate(), glm::rotate(), glm::scale()
Camera & View	glm::lookAt() (Perspective Projection)
Lights	GLSL Phong Lighting Model
Materials & Textures	Fragment Shader with sampler2D

Learning computer science becomes fun when we do a lot of experimentation with the learning process.

Here's the tech blog of Ridit - a new face in tech sector of Bharat.

Concepts first.... Code later...

Seeing fast results in Blender keeps the learning process exciting...

Reclaiming #WhoWeAre