Can't agree more. I joined a game company a few years ago with zero graphics experience outside of writing a ray tracer in college and it was grokking the math and gaining an intuitive understanding of the transformation stack that was the hard part. Once you do though, man, you can't help but marvel at the beauty of it.
I also started with the fixed function pipeline since we had to target OpenGL ES 1.1, and I have to admit, it's a great starting place for a newbie since you don't need to know everything up front.
I also started with the fixed function pipeline since we had to target OpenGL ES 1.1, and I have to admit, it's a great starting place for a newbie since you don't need to know everything up front.