Difference between glTexSubImage and glTexImage function in OpenGL

glteximage2d, opengl

Solution

You create a texture using `glTexImage`, and then update its contents with `glTexSubImage`. When you update the texture, you can update the entire texture, or just a sub-rectangle of it.

It is far more efficient to create the one texture and update it than to create it and delete it repeatedly, so in that sense if you have a texture you want to update, always use `glTexSubImage` (after the initial creation).

Other techniques may be applicable for texture updates. For example, see this article on texture streaming for further information.

(Originally, this post suggested using `glMapBuffer` for texture updates - see discussion below.)

Problem

Original source