Accessing image/texture data (texels) on WebGL

Question

I have the following code snippet on WebGL:

var texture = gl.createTexture();
texture.image = new Image();
texture.image.onload = function() { 
     .... //          


        

Answer 1

You can create a framebuffer backed by the texture and then use readPixels() to get the raw RGBA data.

var texture = gl.createTexture();
texture.image = new Image();
texture.image.onload = function() { 

  // Push Texture data to GPU memory
  gl.bindTexture(gl.TEXTURE_2D, texture);
  gl.pixelStorei(gl.UNPACK_FLIP_Y_WEBGL, true);
  gl.texImage2D(gl.TEXTURE_2D, 0, gl.RGBA, gl.RGBA, gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE, this);
  gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_2D, gl.TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, gl.LINEAR);
  gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_2D, gl.TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, gl.LINEAR);

  // Create a framebuffer backed by the texture
  var framebuffer = gl.createFramebuffer();
  gl.bindFramebuffer(gl.FRAMEBUFFER, framebuffer);
  gl.framebufferTexture2D(gl.FRAMEBUFFER, gl.COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, gl.TEXTURE_2D, texture, 0);

  // Read the contents of the framebuffer (data stores the pixel data)
  var data = new Uint8Array(this.width * this.height * 4);
  gl.readPixels(0, 0, this.width, this.height, gl.RGBA, gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE, data);

  gl.deleteFramebuffer(framebuffer);
};
texture.image.src = urlImage;