glBindTexture lets you create or use a named texture. Calling glBindTexture with
target set to
GL_TEXTURE_1D or GL_TEXTURE_2D and texture set to the name
of the newtexture binds the texture name to the target.
When a texture is bound to a target, the previous binding for that
target is automatically broken.
Texture names are unsigned integers. The value zero is reserved to
represent the default texture for each texture target.
Texture names and the corresponding texture contents are local to
the shared display-list space (see glXCreateContext ) of the current
GL rendering context;
two rendering contexts share texture names only if they
also share display lists.
You may use glGenTextures to generate a set of new texture names.
When a texture is first bound, it assumes the dimensionality of its
target: A texture first bound to GL_TEXTURE_1D becomes
1-dimensional and a texture first bound to GL_TEXTURE_2D becomes
2-dimensional. The state of a 1-dimensional texture
immediately after it is first bound is equivalent to the state of the
default GL_TEXTURE_1D at GL initialization, and similarly for
2-dimensional textures.
While a texture is bound, GL operations on the target to which it is
bound affect the bound texture, and queries of the target to which it
is bound return state from the bound texture. If texture mapping of
the dimensionality of the target to which a texture is bound is
active, the bound texture is used.
In effect, the texture targets become aliases for the textures currently
bound to them, and the texture name zero refers to the default textures
that were bound to them at initialization.
A texture binding created with glBindTexture remains active until a different
texture is bound to the same target, or until the bound texture is
deleted with glDeleteTextures .
Once created, a named texture may be re-bound to the target of the
matching dimensionality as often as needed.
It is usually much faster to use glBindTexture to bind an existing named
texture to one of the texture targets than it is to reload the texture image
using glTexImage1D or glTexImage2D .
For additional control over performance, use
glPrioritizeTextures .
glBindTexture is included in display lists.
GL.glBegin()