# How do I render to a texture/framebuffer? **URL:** \ **Category:** OpenGL: Advanced Coding\ **Created:** [March 4, 2025, 9:49pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/how-do-i-render-to-a-texture-framebuffer/111685 "2025-03-04T21:49:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ZILtoid1991](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/ziltoid1991/32/11802_2.png) [@ZILtoid1991](https://community.khronos.org/u/ZILtoid1991)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2025, 9:49pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/how-do-i-render-to-a-texture-framebuffer/111685/1 "2025-03-04T21:49:15Z")
I tried to render to a framebuffer similar to what [can be found here](https://learnopengl.com/Advanced-OpenGL/Framebuffers), I cannot seem to be able to use the created framebuffer at all for some reason, even with a “dummy shader” that writes a specific color to the buffer I cannot seem to get anything out of it. It’s like either the framebuffer somehow doesn’t exist yet does not cause issues on the driver side, or I bind then unbind it the wrong way for some reason despite copying the code from the tutorial. Same if I turn off the depth testing. ---
**Author:** ![Dark\_Photon](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/dark_photon/32/4349_2.png) [@Dark\_Photon](https://community.khronos.org/u/Dark_Photon)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 2:01pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/how-do-i-render-to-a-texture-framebuffer/111685/2 "2025-03-05T14:01:33Z")
> [@ZILtoid1991](#): > > I tried to render to a framebuffer similar to what can be found here: > > - [LearnOpenGL - Framebuffers](https://learnopengl.com/Advanced-OpenGL/Framebuffers) > > I cannot seem to be able to use the created framebuffer at all for some reason, … > I cannot seem to get anything out of it. > It’s like either the framebuffer somehow doesn’t exist yet … or I bind then unbind it the wrong way … Are you doing this? - [LearnOpenGL - Debugging](https://learnopengl.com/In-Practice/Debugging) Are there any GL errors being thrown? Forget explicitly drawing to the FBO for a minute. Can you just “clear” its color buffer to a constant color and see that working in the result? Try different colors. If that works, you know you’ve got it bound as the active `GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER` properly. So you can look at how you’re drawing to it. If that doesn’t work, then you probably don’t even have that FBO bound properly (or at least at the right times). ---
**Author:** ![ZILtoid1991](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/ziltoid1991/32/11802_2.png) [@ZILtoid1991](https://community.khronos.org/u/ZILtoid1991)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 8:29pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/how-do-i-render-to-a-texture-framebuffer/111685/3 "2025-03-05T20:29:45Z")
It seems the issue is when I try to bind the framebuffer with the line: ```d glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, gl_FrameBuffer[updatedBuffer]); ``` And I get the error code 1280 (bad enum) regardless of which framebuffer enum I’m using in the line. The code which generates the framebuffer does not have this issue. EDIT: It seems that bad enum issue was with a texture loader I wrote, but still couldn’t fix the issue with the framebuffer. ---
**Author:** ![Dark\_Photon](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/dark_photon/32/4349_2.png) [@Dark\_Photon](https://community.khronos.org/u/Dark_Photon)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 10:34pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/how-do-i-render-to-a-texture-framebuffer/111685/4 "2025-03-05T22:34:11Z")
Ok, so you’re seeing a GL error. But it sounds like you might be unsure exactly “which” GL call threw that error. In that case, do this: - [OpenGL Error : Catching errors (the easy way)](https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/OpenGL_Error#Catching_errors_(the_easy_way)) If you’re using NVIDIA drivers, and you disable their “Threaded Optimization” option (which is anything but) in NVIDIA Control Panel → Manage 3D Settings, then your app will literally be interrupted with this GL message callback inside of the GL call which triggered the GL error to be thrown. This makes it absolutely trivial to determined “who dun it”! 🙂 (IIRC, I think that LearnOpenGL link above mentions this method too.) ---
**Author:** ![ZILtoid1991](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/ziltoid1991/32/11802_2.png) [@ZILtoid1991](https://community.khronos.org/u/ZILtoid1991)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 7:25pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/how-do-i-render-to-a-texture-framebuffer/111685/5 "2025-03-07T19:25:12Z")
I’m now on my own way to get wglCreateContextAttribsARB, then my job will be much easier. I just need to know what library do I need to add to the linker. ---
**Author:** ![GClements](https://community.khronos.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/e0b2c6/32.png) [@GClements](https://community.khronos.org/u/GClements)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 7:36pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/how-do-i-render-to-a-texture-framebuffer/111685/6 "2025-03-07T19:36:24Z")
You don’t. `wglCreateContextAttribsARB` isn’t exported by any DLL. You need to use `wglGetProcAddress` to obtain a pointer to that function. Note that you need to already have a context bound in order to use `wglGetProcAddress`. So you have to first use `wglCreateContext` to create a “bootstrap” context in order to be able to call `wglGetProcAddress` to get the pointer to `wglCreateContextAttribsARB` which you can then use to create the “real” context(s). ---
**Author:** ![ZILtoid1991](https://community.khronos.org/user_avatar/community.khronos.org/ziltoid1991/32/11802_2.png) [@ZILtoid1991](https://community.khronos.org/u/ZILtoid1991)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2025, 9:32pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/how-do-i-render-to-a-texture-framebuffer/111685/7 "2025-03-25T21:32:39Z")
Issue was resolved, it was related to some unrelated typo in my rendering pipeline. The rest was okay, it’s just sometimes hard to spot them. ---
**Author:** ![Vijaydiyyala](https://community.khronos.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/9fc29f/32.png) [@Vijaydiyyala](https://community.khronos.org/u/Vijaydiyyala)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2025, 12:28pm UTC](https://community.khronos.org/t/how-do-i-render-to-a-texture-framebuffer/111685/8 "2025-06-06T12:28:01Z")
Hey, I need to know how to use texture mapping for rendering a spectrogram in metal. As I need smoothens the spectrogram. In my current project I am using vertex based approach which results in blocky behaviour between each quad. I need to smooth across each qaud so that It will smoothly gradient over. reframe or correct it