How to bind an array of textures to a WebGL shader uniform?

Question

I need to handle many objects which share only a few textures. Defining and loading textures one by one manually (as described in another post on SO) does not feel right...

Answer 1

You have to index sampler arrays with constant values so you can do something like this

#define numTextures 4

precision mediump float;
varying float v_textureIndex;
uniform sampler2D u_textures[numTextures];

vec4 getSampleFromArray(sampler2D textures[4], int ndx, vec2 uv) {
    vec4 color = vec4(0);
    for (int i = 0; i < numTextures; ++i) {
      vec4 c = texture2D(u_textures[i], uv);
      if (i == ndx) {
        color += c;
      }
    }
    return color;
}

void main() {
    gl_FragColor = getSampleFromArray(u_textures, int(v_textureIndex), vec2(0.5, 0.5));
}

You also need to tell it which texture units to use

var textureLoc = gl.getUniformLocation(program, "u_textures");
// Tell the shader to use texture units 0 to 3
gl.uniform1iv(textureLoc, [0, 1, 2, 3]);

The sample above uses a constant texture coord just to keep it simple but of course you can use any texture coordinates.

Here's a sample:

var canvas = document.getElementById("c");
var gl = canvas.getContext('webgl');

// Note: createProgramFromScripts will call bindAttribLocation
// based on the index of the attibute names we pass to it.
var program = webglUtils.createProgramFromScripts(
    gl, 
    ["vshader", "fshader"], 
    ["a_position", "a_textureIndex"]);
gl.useProgram(program);
var textureLoc = gl.getUniformLocation(program, "u_textures[0]");
// Tell the shader to use texture units 0 to 3
gl.uniform1iv(textureLoc, [0, 1, 2, 3]);

var positions = [
      1,  1,  
     -1,  1,  
     -1, -1,  
      1,  1,  
     -1, -1,  
      1, -1,  
];
    
var textureIndex = [
    0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1,
];

var vertBuffer = gl.createBuffer();
gl.bindBuffer(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, vertBuffer);
gl.bufferData(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, new Float32Array(positions), gl.STATIC_DRAW);
gl.enableVertexAttribArray(0);
gl.vertexAttribPointer(0, 2, gl.FLOAT, false, 0, 0);

var vertBuffer = gl.createBuffer();
gl.bindBuffer(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, vertBuffer);
gl.bufferData(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, new Uint8Array(textureIndex), gl.STATIC_DRAW);
gl.enableVertexAttribArray(1);
gl.vertexAttribPointer(1, 1, gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE, false, 0, 0);

var colors = [
    [0, 0, 255, 255],
    [0, 255, 0, 255],
    [255, 0, 0, 255],
    [0, 255, 255, 255],
];

// make 4 textures
colors.forEach(function(color, ndx) {
    gl.activeTexture(gl.TEXTURE0 + ndx);
    var tex = gl.createTexture();
   gl.bindTexture(gl.TEXTURE_2D, tex);
   gl.texImage2D(
      gl.TEXTURE_2D, 0, gl.RGBA, 1, 1, 0,
      gl.RGBA, gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE, new Uint8Array(color));
});


gl.drawArrays(gl.TRIANGLES, 0, positions.length / 2);

canvas { border: 1px solid black; }

<script src="https://webglfundamentals.org/webgl/resources/webgl-utils.js"></script>
<script id="vshader" type="whatever">
    attribute vec4 a_position;
    attribute float a_textureIndex;
    varying float v_textureIndex;
    void main() {
      gl_Position = a_position;
      v_textureIndex = a_textureIndex;
    }    
</script>
<script id="fshader" type="whatever">
#define numTextures 4
precision mediump float;
varying float v_textureIndex;
uniform sampler2D u_textures[numTextures];
    
vec4 getSampleFromArray(sampler2D textures[4], int ndx, vec2 uv) {
    vec4 color = vec4(0);
    for (int i = 0; i < numTextures; ++i) {
      vec4 c = texture2D(u_textures[i], uv);
      if (i == ndx) {
        color += c;
      }
    }
    return color;
}
    
void main() {
    gl_FragColor = getSampleFromArray(u_textures, int(v_textureIndex + 0.5), vec2(0.5, 0.5));
}
</script>
<canvas id="c" width="300" height="300"></canvas>