I wanted to know if it's possible to give a non NULL texture to a frame buffer to render on it. I mean just drawing on it so it will become the background of the final texture.
From what I have tried it just keep the texture I give and render it directly, there's no drawing on it ( as if the drawing part have been useless).
If i give a NULL texture the drawing is done.
So i wanted to know if it's possible, am i just doing it wrongly?
all example of use of fbo i've seen only show NULL texture sent.
What you're trying to do is not as common as the use case where content in an FBO attachment is rendered from scratch. That's why you won't find as many examples.
It's still perfectly legal, though, and should work. The only difference should really be that you don't call glClear() after attaching the texture to the FBO, and starting to render.
One case where you'll have to be careful is if you use depth buffering for the rendering you want to do on top of the original texture content. In this case, you will of course need a depth buffer attachment (which is typically a renderbuffer) in your FBO, as usual. In this case, you will need to clear your depth buffer, but not the color buffer, before starting to render:
glClear(GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);
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I've been learning a bit of OpenGL lately, and I just got to the Framebuffers.
So by my current understanding, if you have a framebuffer of your own, and you want to draw the color buffer onto the window, you'll need to first draw a quad, and then wrap the texture over it? Is that right? Or is there something like glDrawArrays(), glDrawElements() version for framebuffers?
It seems a bit... Odd (clunky? Hackish?) to me that you have to wrap a texture over a quad in order to draw the framebuffer. This doesn't have to be done with the default framebuffer. Or is that done behind your back?
Well. The main point of framebuffer objects is to render scenes to buffers that will not get displayed but rather reused somewhere, as a source of data for some other operation (shadow maps, High dynamic range processing, reflections, portals...).
If you want to display it, why do you use a custom framebuffer in the first place?
Now, as #CoffeeandCode comments, there is indeed a glBlitFramebuffer call to allow transfering pixels from one framebuffer to another. But before you go ahead and use that call, ask yourself why you need that extra step. It's not a free operation...
In order to implement "depth-peeling", I render my OpenGL scene in to a series of framebuffers each equipped with a rgba color texture and depth texture. This works fine if I don't care about anti-aliasing. If I do, then it seems the correct thing to do is enable GL_MULTISAMPLING and use a GL_TEXTURE_2D_MULTISAMPLE instead of GL_TEXTURE_2D. But I'm confused about which other calls need to be replaced.
In particular, how should I adapt my framebuffer construction to use glTexImage2DMultisample instead of glTexImage2D?
Do I need to change the calls to glFramebufferTexture2D beyond using GL_TEXTURE_2D_MULTISAMPLE instead of GL_TEXTURE_2D?
If I'm rendering both color and depth into textures, do I need to make a call to glRenderbufferStorageMultisample?
Finally, is there some glBlit* that I need to do in addition to setting up textures for the framebuffer to render into?
There are many related questions on this topic, but none of the solutions I found seem to point to a canonical tutorial or clear example putting all these together.
While I have only used multisampled FBO rendering with renderbuffers, not textures, the following is my understanding.
Do I need to change the calls to glFramebufferTexture2D beyond using GL_TEXTURE_2D_MULTISAMPLE instead of GL_TEXTURE_2D?
No, that's all you need. You create the texture with glTexImage2DMultisample(), and then attach it using GL_TEXTURE_2D_MULTISAMPLE as the 3rd argument to glFramebufferTexture2D(). The only constraint is that the level (5th argument) has to be 0.
If I'm rendering both color and depth into textures, do I need to make a call to glRenderbufferStorageMultisample?
Yes. If you attach a depth buffer to the same FBO, you need to use a multisampled renderbuffer, with the same number of samples as the color buffer. So you create your depth renderbuffer with glRenderbufferStorageMultisample(), passing in the same sample count you used for the color buffer.
Finally, is there some glBlit* that I need to do in addition to setting up textures for the framebuffer to render into?
Not for rendering into the framebuffer. Once you're done rendering, you have a couple of options:
You can downsample (resolve) the multisample texture to a regular texture, and then use the regular texture for your subsequent rendering. For resolving the multisample texture, you can use glBlitFramebuffer(), where the multisample texture is attached to the GL_READ_FRAMEBUFFER, and the regular texture to the GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER.
You can use the multisample texture for your subsequent rendering. You will need to use the sampler2DMS type for the samplers in your shader code, with the corresponding sampling functions.
For option 1, I don't really see a good reason to use a multisample texture. You might just as well use a multisample renderbuffer, which is slightly easier to use, and should be at least as efficient. For this, you create a renderbuffer for the color attachment, and allocate it with glRenderbufferStorageMultisample(), very much like what you need for the depth buffer.
I would like to save the output of my image processing OpenGL shader program to an image file and also display the result on the screen. I know how to save the window framebuffer using glReadPixels(). However, the resolution of the screen is smaller than the dimensions of the image.
If I render to an FBO, do I need to call glDrawArrays() again after saving and unbinding the FBO to see the results on the screen? Or is it possible to tell the window framebuffer to render from the FBO without having to run the shader program a second time?
To save the rendered image in the RBO, you can read the pixels directly by setting which buffer OpenGL will read the pixels from by calling glReadBuffer. In your particular case, setting the read buffer to GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT<i> should do the trick. See the glDrawBuffer man page for details.
In order to display the image in the FBO: yes, you will need to make an additional rendering pass to copy the FBO's image into the default frame buffer. You an either bind the FBO as a texture, and render geometry, as you suggest, to get the image on the screen, or, you may be able to use glBlitFramebuffer to simplify the copying and image filtering.
If I render to an FBO, do I need to call glDrawArrays() again after saving and unbinding the FBO to see the results on the screen?
You should use glBlitFramebuffer (...), the purpose of this function is to copy one framebuffer (read buffer) to another (draw buffer). Provided you are not doing something unusual like drawing into an integer texture attachment then your FBO's draw buffer should be compatible with your default framebuffer (window).
There are some additional caveats related to the filter method and the type of image you are copying (e.g. depth buffers cannot use linearly interpolation), but since you are discussing "full scale" here, I imagine you are interested in GL_NEAREST anyway.
I am trying to write a program that writes video camera frames into a quad.
I saw tutorials explaining that with framebuffers can be faster, but still learning how to do it.
But then besides the framebuffer, I found that there is also renderbuffers.
The question is, if the purpose is only to write a texture into a quad that will fill up the screen, do I really need a renderbuffer?
I understand that renderbuffers are for depth testing, which I think is only for checking Z position of the pixel, therefore would be silly to have to create a render buffer for my scenario, correct?
A framebuffer object is a place to stick images so that you can render to them. Color buffers, depth buffers, etc all go into a framebuffer object.
A renderbuffer is like a texture, but with two important differences:
It is always 2D and has no mipmaps. So it's always exactly 1 image.
You cannot read from a renderbuffer. You can attach them to an FBO and render to them, but you can't sample from them with a texture access or something.
So you're talking about two mostly separate concepts. Renderbuffers do not have to be "for depth testing." That is a common use case for renderbuffers, because if you're rendering the colors to a texture, you usually don't care about the depth. You need a depth because you need depth testing for hidden-surface removal. But you don't need to sample from that depth. So instead of making a depth texture, you make a depth renderbuffer.
But renderbuffers can also use colors rather than depth formats. You just can't attach them as textures. You can still blit from/to them, and you can still read them back with glReadPixels. You just can't read from them in a shader.
Oddly enough, this does nothing to answer your question:
The question is, if the purpose is only to write a texture into a quad that will fill up the screen, do I really need a renderbuffer?
I don't see why you need a framebuffer or a renderbuffer of any kind. A texture is a texture; just draw a textured quad.
I currently have a rendering engine using multiple passes in which various parts of the image are rendered on textures, and then combined using shaders. It works, and now I would like to activate multi-sampling.
I read here ( http://www.opengl.org/wiki/Framebuffer_Object_Examples#MSAA ) that, with OpenGL, you can't attach a GL_TEXTURE2D_MULTISAMPLE to a framebuffer object.
It seems one way to use multi-sampling and still have access to the result as texture is to use a multi-sampled render buffer, and then copy the result into a multisample texture.
My question is: what would be the best way to go forward?
Is it possible to render in a render buffer and use the output in my shader, without copying into a texture?
Should I indeed copy the content of the buffer into a texture, and then use it?
Is there another, better, solution?
Thanks.
I read here ( http://www.opengl.org/wiki/Framebuffer_Object_Examples#MSAA ) that, with OpenGL, you can't attach a GL_TEXTURE2D_MULTISAMPLE to a framebuffer object.
Read it again. It says nothing about GL_TEXTURE_2D_MULTISAMPLE textures. Actually, I take that back: don't read that page again. If you want good FBO info, read the page on Framebuffer Objects that explains 3.x behavior. The page you linked to is old.
Back in the EXT days, all you had were multisampled renderbuffers, because multisample textures didn't exist. You could create multisampled buffers, but you couldn't texture with them. You could only blit them.
In 3.3 OpenGL, you can create multisampled textures. And you can attach them just like any other texture to an FBO.