Textures are mapped to the geometry by specifying a texture coordinate for each vertex.

Texture coordinates are typically specified as floating point values that are in a range between 0.0 and 1.0.

Texture coordinates are named s, t, r, and q:

• s for 1D texture coordinates
• [s, t]T for 2D texture coordinates (occasionally, [u, v]T)
• [s, t, r]T for 3D texture coordinates
• [s, t, r, q]T for 4D texture coordinates

Textures are mapped by specifying a texture coordinate for each vertex.  OpenGL will stretch or shrink the texture as necessary to apply the texture to the model.



During rasterisation, 3D primitives are projected to the camera.  For each fragment, texture coordinates calculated through interpolation.  Texels are looked up in the texture and applied to colour the object in the framebuffer.

Texture coordinates are vertex attributes (like normals) that are passed to the GPU using a VBO.

High