Vidya development

I'm being serious, this isn't a troll thread or whatever.

Im interested in developing games using C++ and OpenGL. My question however is, where do I even start? In a cg artist, so rigging/animating low poly models and creating landscapes isn't an issue. Can I even learn all this without going through a college CS course? What are the things I need to know (optimization, vector math, etc)? Any recommended books?

>>4
Is it imperitive that I use libraries like Ogre orDarkGDK?
Of course not. It's just a lot easier. 3D engines like Ogre and Irrlicht handle a lot of the busywork like importing your 3D models and such. Why reinvent the wheel?
Though if you want to learn and have some NIH syndrome, you can obviously do it all yourself. It's just a lot of pain and not very exciting, which is why these sort of libraries/SDKs/game engines exist. And even large-scale commercial game companies use them--go look up some game engines on Wikipedia, most articles have examples of commercial games.

If you want to take that route anyway, I suggest learning C through K&R, then picking up something like the OpenGL Red Book (or the OpenGL ES equivalent). I'd delay learning C++ and actual game-specific features until later (though most OpenGL books touch on them) since they're basically an extension/superset of C.