OpenGL Programming Guide

Chapter 9Texture Mapping

Assigning Texture Coordinates

As you draw your texture-mapped scene, you must provide both object coordinates and texture coordinates for each vertex. After transformation, the object coordinates determine where on the screen that particular vertex is rendered. The texture coordinates determine which texel in the texture map is assigned to that vertex. In exactly the same way that colors are interpolated between two vertices of shaded polygons and lines, texture coordinates are linearly interpolated between vertices. (Remember that textures are rectangular arrays of data.)

Texture coordinates can comprise one, two, three, or four coordinates. They're usually referred to as the s, t, r, and q coordinates to distinguish them from object coordinates (x, y, z, and w) and from evaluator coordinates (u and v; see Chapter 11 ). For one-dimensional textures, you use the s coordinate; for two-dimensional textures, you use s and t. Currently, the r coordinate is ignored (although it might have meaning in the future). The q coordinate, like w, is typically given the value 1 and can be used to create homogeneous coordinates; it's described as an advanced feature in "The q Coordinate." The command to specify texture coordinates, glTexCoord*(), is similar to glVertex*(), glColor*(), and glNormal*() - it comes in similar variations and is used the same way between glBegin() and glEnd() pairs. Usually, texture-coordinate values range between 0 and 1; values can be assigned outside this range, however, with the results described in "Repeating and Clamping Textures." void glTexCoord{1234}{sifd}{v}(TYPEcoords);

Sets the current texture coordinates (s, t, r, q). Subsequent calls to glVertex*() result in those vertices being assigned the current texture coordinates. With glTexCoord1*(), the s coordinate is set to the specified value, t and r are set to 0, and q is set to 1. Using glTexCoord2*() allows you to specify s and t; r and q are set to 0 and 1, respectively. With glTexCoord3*(), q is set to 1 and the other coordinates are set as specified. You can specify all coordinates with glTexCoord4*(). Use the appropriate suffix (s, i, f, or d) and the corresponding value for TYPE (GLshort, GLint, GLfloat, or GLdouble) to specify the coordinates' data type. You can supply the coordinates individually, or you can use the vector version of the command to supply them in a single array. Texture coordinates are multiplied by the 4x4 texture matrix before any texture mapping occurs, as described in "The Texture Matrix Stack." Note that integer texture coodinates are interpreted directly rather than being mapped to the range [-1,1] as normal coordinates are.

The next section discusses how to calculate appropriate texture coordinates. Instead of explicitly assigning them yourself, you can choose to have texture coordinates calculated automatically by OpenGL as a function of the vertex coordinates. This technique is described in "Automatic Texture-Coordinate Generation."

Computing Appropriate Texture Coordinates
Repeating and Clamping Textures

OpenGL Programming Guide