Learn

Everything worth reading, in the order worth reading it.

37 hand-picked resources across graphics and game development. Not a link dump — every one says why it earns your evenings, and they are arranged so each stage makes the next one easier. Most are free. Every link is checked.

21 resources

Progress is stored in this browser only.

The labs on this site cover the spine of this path — transforms, projection, the pipeline, light. This is where to go for the parts a browser tab cannot hold: the proofs, the depth, and the people who explain it best.

  1. 01

    Build the intuition

    Before any API. Graphics is linear algebra you can see, so start with the people who make it visible.

    VideoStart here

    Essence of Linear Algebra

    3Blue1Brown

    Fifteen short films that turn matrices from a table of numbers into a motion. If one thing on this page changes how you see the subject, it is this.

    InteractiveStart here

    Immersive Linear Algebra

    Ström, Åström & Akenine-Möller

    A linear algebra book where every figure is draggable. The same idea as this site, applied to the maths underneath it.

    Interactive

    Explanations

    Bartosz Ciechanowski

    The high-water mark for interactive explanation on the web. Read the ones on lights, cameras and curves, then read the rest anyway.

    Video

    Math for Game Developers

    Freya Holmér

    Splines, quaternions and the geometry you actually reach for, taught with unusual care about why the standard explanation confuses people.

  2. 02

    Learn the pipeline

    What the GPU does with your vertices, and the API you use to tell it.

    CourseStart here

    WebGL Fundamentals

    Gregg Tavares

    The best WebGL introduction there is, and refreshingly willing to say which of the conventions you have been taught are arbitrary.

    Course

    WebGL2 Fundamentals

    Gregg Tavares

    The sequel, for when you want instancing, transform feedback and the things WebGL1 makes painful.

    Course

    LearnOpenGL

    Joey de Vries

    The canonical modern OpenGL course. Chapter for chapter it is still the clearest tour of the whole pipeline, and it translates directly to WebGL.

    Reference

    WebGL tutorial

    MDN

    The reference you will keep open in a second tab. Accurate about what each call actually requires.

    Course

    Scratchapixel

    Scratchapixel

    Derives rasterisation and ray tracing from first principles, with the algebra written out. Where to go when you want the proof, not the recipe.

  3. 03

    Write shaders

    The part where you stop arranging other people’s pixels and start computing your own.

    InteractiveStart here

    The Book of Shaders

    Patricio Gonzalez Vivo & Jen Lowe

    Fragment shaders taught as a craft, with an editable canvas on every page. Unfinished for years and still the best starting point.

    Tool

    Shadertoy

    Inigo Quilez & Pol Jeremias

    Thousands of shaders you can read and edit live. The fastest way to see how far a single fragment function can be pushed.

    Reference

    Articles

    Inigo Quilez

    Signed distance functions, raymarching, noise and analytic tricks, from the person who worked most of them out.

  4. 04

    Get light right

    Shading models, materials, and the physics they are approximating.

    BookStart here

    Ray Tracing in One Weekend

    Peter Shirley and contributors

    You will have written a working ray tracer by Sunday evening. Nothing else teaches the light transport ideas so quickly.

    Book

    Physically Based Rendering

    Pharr, Jakob & Humphreys

    The field’s standard reference, free online, and a literate program you can read end to end. Also an Academy Award winner, which is rare for a textbook.

    Reference

    Real-Time Rendering resources

    Akenine-Möller, Haines & Hoffman

    The companion site to the field’s reference book: a maintained index of papers, courses and links for nearly every real-time topic.

  5. 05

    Move to modern GPU

    WebGPU is where the web is going. The concepts carry over; the API is stricter and far more capable.

    CourseStart here

    WebGPU Fundamentals

    Gregg Tavares

    The same clarity as the WebGL series, aimed at the API that replaces it. Start here rather than at the spec.

    Reference

    WebGPU API

    MDN

    Reference for the API surface, including the bits the tutorials skip over.

    Tool

    vgpu

    Vercel Labs

    A small WebGPU library with typed WGSL imports that runs the same code in the browser, in Node, and in tests. Good once you know what it is abstracting.

    Reference

    Three.js

    Ricardo Cabello and contributors

    When you want a scene rather than a pipeline. Worth learning after the fundamentals, so you know what it is doing for you.

    CoursePaid

    Three.js Journey

    Bruno Simon

    The most thorough Three.js course available, and unusually strong on shaders. Paid, and generally judged worth it.