Moderator: Edward Angel, University of New Mexico, United States of America
Ed Angel is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico and the Founding Director of the Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) at UNM. He has over 30 years of experience in research and teaching in computer graphics and image processing. He is the coauthor of the popular textbook: Interactive Computer Graphics: A Top-Down Approach using WebGL (8th Edition; Pearson Education, 2020), and author of the OpenGL: A Primer (Third Edition; Addison Wesley, 2008). He has taught over 100 professional courses worldwide, including at SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia.

Lecturer(s): Edward Angel, University of New Mexico, United States of America
Ed Angel is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico and the Founding Director of the Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) at UNM. He has over 30 years of experience in research and teaching in computer graphics and image processing. He is the coauthor of the popular textbook: Interactive Computer Graphics: A Top-Down Approach using WebGL (8th Edition; Pearson Education, 2020), and author of the OpenGL: A Primer (Third Edition; Addison Wesley, 2008). He has taught over 100 professional courses worldwide, including at SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia.

Dave Shreiner, Unity Technologies, United States of America
Dave Shreiner is a software engineer at Unity Technologies in their XR Graphics group. He's been programming and teaching computer graphics, including numerous courses at SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia, for almost three decades. In addition to his technical skills, he's contributed to numerous books including Interactive Computer Graphics: A Top-Down Approach using WebGL (with Ed Angel for the recently released 8th edition) and several versions of the OpenGL Programming Guide, the OpenGL ES Programming Guide. He was also the conference chair of SIGGRAPH 2014 in Vancouver.

Description: OpenGL and its derivatives including WebGL are the most widely available APIs for creating interactive computer graphics applications across all major platforms. Their uses span virtually all application areas and reveal the most up-to-date features of modern graphics hardware. In recent years, OpenGL has undergone numerous updates that have fundamentally changed how programmers interact with the application-programming interface (API). Over the past four years, there has been extraordinary interest in WebGL, the JavaScript implementation of OpenGL ES 2.0. WebGL is fully shader-based and allows applications to be hosted on Web servers, but execute locally in a Web browser. WebGL applications can use the full power of the local GPU, and its integration with the wealth of Web packages and technologies allows the creation of complex and engaging Web-based applications. Although WebGL is “simpler” than recent versions of desktop OpenGL, there are some significant differences between using WebGL and desktop OpenGL. Working within a browser brings up a variety of issues have not been covered in previous introductory courses. This course provides an accelerated introduction to programming with WebGL. This course starts with an overview of the WebGL pipeline, focusing on the basic shader-based pipeline Participants will see complete examples that include the required shaders and the interface to the application program. We will discuss some of the key differences between working with WebGL and desktop OpenGL and survey advanced applications of the API. An introductory OpenGL course has been a popular offering at SIGGRAPH for over 15 years. Four years ago, the course was switched from desktop OpenGL to WebGL at both SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia. The updated course proposed here should appeal to not only attendees who have not programmed graphics applications but also to experienced desktop OpenGL programmers who are considering switching over to WebGL.