what is the best graphics API

Vulkan because it's great and multiplatform

DX12 is shit because it's Windows only

Metal is shit because it's shit and Apple only

Vulkan.

OpenGL

>>59545048
MeTaL

But not the Appleshit one.

>>59545048
all i know is vulkan is a bitch to program with.

>>59545270
yeah if you are stupid

>>59545048
Vulcan

>>59545071
Basically this.

Not that there is a big difference between the low level semantics.

if you want to start working on computer graphics start with OpenGL.

Vulkan is a lot more lower-level and harder to grasp, and there is basically 0 learning material for beginners. It's a lot easier to learn Vulkan once you are familiar to OpenGL, also most things translate (ie. the rendering pipeline follows the same principles).

>>59545048
>I need to learn more about this
I bet you'll learn many maymays here

>>59545674
Not OP, but
I'm intested in opengl, too
For inexperienced people is it better to start off with Unity / unreal engine? Or do they hide graphics programming behind their engines?

I tried some OpenGL tutorials and they're just too simple.
I have yet to find one that goes beyond displaying a simple rotating cube.

But yeah, by looking at some examples i can agree with you, opengl looks easier to learn than vulkan

Just write your graphics code in assembly you plebe.

>Kids these days and their acronym programming interfaces

>>59545048
Basically any Kronos API. They are open source and cross platform there's no way to fuck up with that

Metal, hypothetically. Apple has full control over their environment. They're able to use their hardware to the maximum potential. Therefor, in theory, Apple devices SHOULD give you a lot better performance with less resources than others. This is why Apple could get away with 2 GB of RAM when Android devices needed 4 GB. Plus, due to how Java works and all that didn't help either as Android has to work with a lot of different things.

Vulkan is better than OpenGL, but not quite there yet. It's doing amazing things and we need it to succeed so that the Jewish don't rape us more than they already have, but DirectX is still the best compared to OpenGL by far and Vulkan by a considerable amount.

Vulkan is just the Linux of the API world.

>>59545071
First post; best post.
/thread

>>59545793
Graphics programming is not game development, so learning OpenGL vs one of those engines depends entirely on what you want to do.

Unreal and Unity make working with shaders painful, specially if you try to use them for more than "materials", but is a tradeoff they decided to make to support multiple APIs and make it easier for non-graphics programmers to use.

>I tried some OpenGL tutorials and they're just too simple.
What languages do you work with? I can recommend tutorials.

>opengl looks easier to learn than vulkan

I wouldn't call OpenGL "easier", actually Vulkan makes a lot more sense, in OpenGL you just create an openglcontext object that magically sends your shader code to the gpu and does everything, I don't like magic. In Vulkan you can (and must) declare the graphics pipeline and suddenly you can create your shaders, have all the same buffers and uniforms and what not and free extra performance (well, is not direct has I make it look, but in reality all you need is a bunch of boilerplate code).

>>59545071
This. Fpbp.

>>59545071
lets ignore the Multiplatform aspect and judge the APIs for what they are. which is the best, gives the best performance, makes the most of the hardware

>>59545793
You'll need to learn graphics programming before you'll be able to do much with an engine. Blueprints can only take you so far, especially when they don't work properly.

>>59546957
OpenGL isn't magic at all. You're right that it's a giant state machine that you have to carefully manipulate or it will explode. Maybe that's what you meant by magic. You still have to tell it every minute little thing.

Learning computer graphics with OpenGL / SDL2 / (Your favorite language here) and then moving onto Vulkan is imho the best route to learn it.

http://learnopengl.com and http://open.gl target C++ but the API is the same generally across most languages

>>59549451
There is no significant difference between them except their required platform.

>>59545048
Just use SDL.

>>59545071

Fpbpbppbpbpbbppbpbpbt

Actually, yes.

>>59546957
>in OpenGL you just create an openglcontext object that magically sends your shader code to the gpu and does everything
This was true for OpenGL 2 but not so much for 3 and 4.