[vtkusers] VTK or OpenGL directly?

[Julian Holt]

Guys

This might be a strange question but hey.....

I am writing a FE viewer and I am looking at VTK and various other "OGL
wrappers"

But......

I am wondering if infact VTK is NOT the way to go?

Basically all I need to do is render 3 and 4 sided polygons with scalar
values at vertex points and then provide 3D rotation + interrogation.

Now VTK does all this (and more) but as a newbie it seems to me that if I am
going to dive off and learn yet another API then why not just learn the
OpenGL API?

I.E code OGL directly and forget wrapper apps.

VTK obviously does a lot of other cool stuff (grid generation etc) but I
don't need to do that because my meshes are built in external FE codes. I am
only interested in display/viewing stuff.

Having taken an OGL book home last night to read whilst watching tv (sad I
know), the OGL API doesn't look too bad and OGL is probably a more portable
skill - there is even a version that runs on mobile phones!!!!

Thoughts?

Is OGL a nightmare to code when you get into it?

Thanks


Julian