What are some best practices for OpenGL coding (esp. w.r.t. object orientation)?

Question

This semester, I took a course in computer graphics at my University. At the moment, we\'re starting to get into some of the more advanced stuff like heightmaps, averaging n

Answer 1

if you do want to roll your own the above answers work well enough. A lot of the principles that are mentioned are implemented in most of the open source graphics engines. Scenegraphs are one method to move away from the direct mode opengl drawing.

OpenScenegraph is one Open Source app that gives you a large (maybe too large) library of tools for doing OO 3D graphics, there are a lot of other out there.