Write to texture GLSL

Question

I want to be able to (in fragment shader) add one texture to another. Right now I have projective texturing and want to expand on that.

Here is what I have so far :

Im also drawing the viewfrustum along which the blue/gray test image is projected onto the geometry that is in constant rotation.

My vertex shader:

    ProjTexCoord = ProjectorMatrix * ModelTransform * raw_pos;

My Fragment Shader:

vec4 diffuse = texture(texture1, vs_st);
vec4 projTexColor = textureProj(texture2, ProjTexCoord);
vec4 shaded = diffuse; // max(intensity * diffuse, ambient); -- no shadows for now
    if (ProjTexCoord[0] > 0.0 || 
        ProjTexCoord[1] > 0.0 ||
        ProjTexCoord[0] < ProjTexCoord[2] || 
        ProjTexCoord[1] < ProjTexCoord[2]){
        diffuse = shaded;
    }else if(dot(n, projector_aim) < 0 ){
        diffuse = projTexColor;
    }else{
        diffuse = shaded;
    }

What I want to achieve:

When for example - the user presses a button, I want the blue/gray texture to be written to the gray texture on the sphere and rotate with it. Imagine it as sort of "taking a picture" or painting on top of the sphere so that the blue/gray texture spins with the sphere after a button is pressed.

As the fragment shader operates on each pixel it should be possible to copy pixel-by-pixel from one texture to the other, but I have no clue how, I might be googling for the wrong stuff.

How can I achieve this technically? What method is most versatile? Suggestions are very much appreciated, please let me know If more code is necessary.

Answer 1

Just to be clear, you'd like to bake decals into your sphere's grey texture.

The trouble with writing to the grey texture while drawing another object is it's not one to one. You may be writing twice or more to the same texel, or a single fragment may need to write to many texels in your grey texture. It may sound attractive as you already have the coordinates of everything in the one place, but I wouldn't do this.

I'd start by creating a texture containing the object space position of each texel in your grey texture. This is key, so that when you click you can render to your grey texture (using an FBO) and know where each texel is in your current view or your projective texture's view. There may be edge cases where the same bit of texture appears on multiple triangles. You could do this by rendering your sphere to the grey texture using the texture coordinates as your vertex positions. You probably need a floating point texture for this, and the following image probably isn't the sphere's texture mapping, but it'll do for demonstration :P.

So when you click, you render a full screen quad to your grey texture with alpha blending enabled. Using the grey texture object space positions, each fragment computes the image space position within the blue texture's projection. Discard the fragments that are outside the texture and sample/blend in those that are inside.

Answer 2

I think you are overcomplicating things.

• Writes to textures inside classic shaders (i.e. not compute shader) are only implemented for latest hardware and very latest OpenGL versions and extensions.
• It could be terribly slow if used wrong. It's so easy to introduce pipeline stalls and CPU-GPU sync points
• Pixel shader could become a terribly slow unmaintainable mess of branches and texture fetches.
• And all this mess will be done for every single pixel every single frame

Solution: KISS

• Just update your texture on CPU side.
• Write to texture, replacing parts of it with desired content
• Update is only need to be done once and only when you need this. Data persists until you rewrite it (not even once per frame, but only once per change request)
• Pixel shader is dead brain simple: no branching, one texture
• To get target pixels, implement ray-picking (you will need it anyway for any non-trivial interactive 3D-graphics program)

P.S. "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein.