opengl - When should glVertexAttribPointer be called?

Question

It's not obvious from the documentation when glVertexAttribPointer should be called. It looks like it's part of VBO initialisation, but I notice example code calling it during rendering.

glVertexAttribPointer(vertexAttributeId, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, sizeof(Vertex2D), reinterpret_cast<const GLvoid*>(offsetof(Vertex2D, m_x)));

Should glVertexAttribPointer be called during initialisation of a GL_ARRAY_BUFFER or should it be called during rendering (after a call to glBindBuffer)?

Answer 1

The function glVertexAttribPointer specifies the format and source buffer (ignoring the deprecated usage of client arrays) of a vertex attribute that is used when rendering something (i.e. the next glDraw... call).

Now there are two scenarios. You either use vertex array objects (VAOs) or you don't (though not using VAOs is deprecated and discouraged/prohibited in modern OpenGL). If you're not using VAOs, then you would usually call glVertexAttribPointer (and the corresponding glEnableVertexAttribArray) right before rendering to setup the state properly. If using VAOs though, you actually call it (and the enable function) inside the VAO creation code (which is usually part of some initialization or object creation), since its settings are stored inside the VAO and all you need to do when rendering is bind the VAO and call a draw function.

But no matter when you call glVertexAttribPointer, you should bind the corresponding buffer right before (no matter when that was actually created and filled), since the glVertexAttribPointer function sets the currently bound GL_ARRAY_BUFFER as source buffer for this attribute (and stores this setting, so afterwards you can freely bind another VBO).

So in modern OpenGL using VAOs (which is recommended), it's usually similar to this workflow:

//initialization
glGenVertexArrays
glBindVertexArray

glGenBuffers
glBindBuffer
glBufferData

glVertexAttribPointer
glEnableVertexAttribArray

glBindVertexArray(0)

glDeleteBuffers //you can already delete it after the VAO is unbound, since the
                //VAO still references it, keeping it alive (see comments below).

...

//rendering
glBindVertexArray
glDrawWhatever

---

When not using VAOs it would be something like that:

//initialization
glGenBuffers
glBindBuffer
glBufferData

...

//rendering
glBindBuffer
glVertexAttribPointer
glEnableVertexAttribArray
glDrawWhatever