What is the role of glBindVertexArrays vs glBindBuffer and what is their relationship?

Question

I'm new to OpenGL and Graphics Programming. I've been reading a textbook which has been really thorough and well-written so far.However, I've hit a point in the code that I'm not quite understanding and I'd like to make sense of these lines before I move on.

GLuint abuffer;  glGenVertexArrays(1, &abuffer); glBindVertexArray(abuffer); 

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GLuint buffer; glGenBuffers(1, &buffer); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, buffer); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(points), points, GL_STATIC_DRAW); 

The book explains that the first three lines are creating a vertex-array object, which is used to bundle associated data with a vertex array. The second line finds an unused name (I'm guessing an unsigned integer identifier stored in abuffer) and the third line creates the object / makes it active.

The book explains that the 4th-7th lines creating a buffer object to store our data, with the 5th line giving us an unused identifier (similar to line 2 for the vertex array object?), the 6th line creating the buffer, and the 7th line allocating sufficient memory on the CPU and creating a pointer to our data (points) for GL_STATIC_DRAW.

What does it mean for the object to be active? When would you subsequently use abuffer? What does it mean for a vertex array to bundle associated data, and when was the data associated with this vertex-array object?

I'm confused about the relationship between abuffer and buffer. I'm confused about what the vertex array's relationship with the buffer object is, and at what point that relationship is formed. I'm not sure whether they are, in fact related, but they are presented in the textbook one immediately after the other.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

From a low-level perspective, you can think of an array as having two parts to it:

• Information about the size, shape, and type of the array (e.g., 32-bit floating point numbers, containing rows of vectors with four elements each).

• The array data, which is little more than a big blob of bytes.

Even though the low-level concept has mostly stayed the same, the way you specify arrays has changed several times over the years.

OpenGL 3.0 / ARB_vertex_array_object

This is the way you probably should be doing things today. It is very rare to find people who can't run OpenGL 3.x and yet still have money to spend on your software.

A buffer object in OpenGL is a big blob of bits. Think of the "active" buffer as just a global variable, and there are a bunch of functions which use the active buffer instead of using a parameter. These global state variables are the ugly side of OpenGL (prior to direct state access, which is covered below).

GLuint buffer;  // Generate a name for a new buffer. // e.g. buffer = 2 glGenBuffers(1, &buffer);  // Make the new buffer active, creating it if necessary. // Kind of like: // if (opengl->buffers[buffer] == null) //     opengl->buffers[buffer] = new Buffer() // opengl->current_array_buffer = opengl->buffers[buffer] glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, buffer);  // Upload a bunch of data into the active array buffer // Kind of like: // opengl->current_array_buffer->data = new byte[sizeof(points)] // memcpy(opengl->current_array_buffer->data, points, sizeof(points)) glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(points), points, GL_STATIC_DRAW); 

Now, your typical vertex shader takes vertexes as input, not a big blob of bits. So you need to specify how the blob of bits (the buffer) is decoded into vertexes. That is the job of the array. Likewise, there is an "active" array which you can think of as just a global variable:

GLuint array; // Generate a name for a new array. glGenVertexArrays(1, &array); // Make the new array active, creating it if necessary. glBindVertexArray(array);  // Make the buffer the active array buffer. glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, buffer); // Attach the active buffer to the active array, // as an array of vectors with 4 floats each. // Kind of like: // opengl->current_vertex_array->attributes[attr] = { //     type = GL_FLOAT, //     size = 4, //     data = opengl->current_array_buffer // } glVertexAttribPointer(attr, 4, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, 0); // Enable the vertex attribute glEnableVertexAttribArray(attr); 

OpenGL 2.0 (the old way)

In OpenGL 2.x, there weren't vertex arrays and the data was just global. You still had to call glVertexAttribPointer() and glEnableVertexAttribArray(), but you had to call them every time that you used a buffer. In OpenGL 3.x, you just set up the array once.

Going back to OpenGL 1.5, you could actually use buffers, but you used a separate function to bind each kind of data. For example, glVertexPointer() was for vertex data, and glNormalPointer() was for normal data. Prior to OpenGL 1.5, there weren't buffers, but you could use pointers into your application memory.

OpenGL 4.3 / ARB_vertex_attrib_binding

In 4.3, or if you have the ARB_vertex_attrib_binding extension, you can specify the attribute format and the attribute data separately. This is nice because it lets you easily switch one vertex array between different buffers.

GLuint array; // Generate a name for a new array array. glGenVertexArrays(1, &array); // Make the new array active, creating it if necessary. glBindVertexArray(array);  // Enable my attributes glEnableVertexAttribArray(loc_attrib); glEnableVertexAttribArray(normal_attrib); glEnableVertexAttribArray(texcoord_attrib); // Set up the formats for my attributes glVertexAttribFormat(loc_attrib,      3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0); glVertexAttribFormat(normal_attrib,   3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 12); glVertexAttribFormat(texcoord_attrib, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 24); // Make my attributes all use binding 0 glVertexAttribBinding(loc_attrib,      0); glVertexAttribBinding(normal_attrib,   0); glVertexAttribBinding(texcoord_attrib, 0);  // Quickly bind all attributes to use "buffer" // This replaces several calls to glVertexAttribPointer() // Note: you don't need to bind the buffer first!  Nice! glBindVertexBuffer(0, buffer, 0, 32);  // Quickly bind all attributes to use "buffer2" glBindVertexBuffer(0, buffer2, 0, 32); 

OpenGL 4.5 / ARB_direct_state_access

In OpenGL 4.5, or if you have the ARB_direct_state_access extension, you no longer need to call glBindBuffer() or glBindVertexArray() just to set things up... you specify the arrays and buffers directly. You only need to bind the array at the end to draw it.

GLuint array; // Generate a name for the array and create it. // Note that glGenVertexArrays() won't work here. glCreateVertexArrays(1, &array); // Instead of binding it, we pass it to the functions below.  // Enable my attributes glEnableVertexArrayAttrib(array, loc_attrib); glEnableVertexArrayAttrib(array, normal_attrib); glEnableVertexArrayAttrib(array, texcoord_attrib); // Set up the formats for my attributes glVertexArrayAttribFormat(array, loc_attrib,      3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0); glVertexArrayAttribFormat(array, normal_attrib,   3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 12); glVertexArrayAttribFormat(array, texcoord_attrib, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 24); // Make my attributes all use binding 0 glVertexArrayAttribBinding(array, loc_attrib,      0); glVertexArrayAttribBinding(array, normal_attrib,   0); glVertexArrayAttribBinding(array, texcoord_attrib, 0);  // Quickly bind all attributes to use "buffer" glVertexArrayVertexBuffer(array, 0, buffer, 0, 32);  // Quickly bind all attributes to use "buffer2" glVertexArrayVertexBuffer(array, 0, buffer2, 0, 32);  // You still have to bind the array to draw. glBindVertexArray(array); glDrawArrays(...); 

ARB_direct_state_access is nice for a lot of reasons. You can forget about binding arrays and buffers (except when you draw) so you don't have to think about hidden global variables that OpenGL is tracking for you. You can forget about the difference between "generating a name for an object" and "creating an object" because glCreateBuffer() and glCreateArray() do both at the same time.

Vulkan

Vulkan goes even farther and has you write code like the pseudocode I wrote above. So you'll see something like:

// This defines part of a "vertex array", sort of VkVertexInputAttributeDescription attrib[3]; attrib[0].location = 0; // Feed data into shader input #0 attrib[0].binding = 0;  // Get data from buffer bound to slot #0 attrib[0].format = VK_FORMAT_R32G32B32_SFLOAT; attrib[0].offset = 0; // repeat for attrib[1], attrib[2]