Posted by Sven Gothel on Feb 01, 2020; 11:04pm
URL: https://forum.jogamp.org/Multi-Texturing-tp4040312p4040320.html

On 2/1/20 6:38 AM, philjord [via jogamp] wrote:
> Hi,
> Thanks very much for submitting a easily understood problem.
>
>
> The root of your problem is to do with the intent and usage of textures and
> TextureUnitStates, and generally the basic use of multi-texturing.
>
> Multi-texturing is the term used for layering texture one on top of another
> with some sort of interesting operation happening between them.

Great explanation Phil.

I would even go so far as to (simply) say n-textures are provided as
an (input) data source to be used via the texture unit (in shader)
for whatever you desire ..

You may stream the data into the GPU (or CPU/GPU shared memory)
off-thread using a shared GL context or the old pbuffer concept
and act upon them as desired when available.

This is a shared domain with compute and earlier GPU accel tasks
loved to use multiple RED only textures (1 color, maybe even 1 dimension).

And so on and so forth .. (sorry, I always elaborate too much).

In our JOGL Texture util class,
I elaborated about the texture unit concept a while ago:
<https://jogamp.org/deployment/jogamp-next/javadoc/jogl/javadoc/com/jogamp/opengl/util/texture/Texture.html#textureCallOrder>.

Using multiple texture units in parallel is multitexture usage.

~Sven