2003-2004 Silicon Graphics, Inc.
glBindTexture 3G
glBindTexture bind a named texture to a texturing target

## C Specification

void `glBindTexture` GLenum target GLuint texture

## Parameters

target

  Specifies the target to which the texture is bound. Must be `GL_TEXTURE_2D`.

texture

  Specifies the name of a texture.

## Description

`glBindTexture` lets you create or use a named texture. Calling `glBindTexture` with target set to `GL_TEXTURE_2D`, and texture set to the name of the new texture 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 0 is reserved to represent the default texture for each texture target. Texture names and the corresponding texture contents are local to the shared texture-object space (see eglCreateContext) of the current GL rendering context.

You may use glGenTextures to generate a set of new texture names.

While a texture is bound, GL operations on the target to which it is bound affect 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 0 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 glTexImage2D.

## Errors

`GL_INVALID_ENUM` is generated if target is not one of the allowable values.

## Associated Gets

glGet with argument `GL_TEXTURE_BINDING_2D`

## See Also

eglCreateContext, glActiveTexture, glCompressedTexImage2D, glCopyTexImage2D, glDeleteTextures, glGenTextures, glGet, glTexImage2D, glTexParameter

## Copyright

Copyright 2003-2004 Silicon Graphics, Inc. This document is licensed under the SGI Free Software B License. For details, see http://oss.sgi.com/projects/FreeB/.