Stitch images together in WebGL using a framebuffer

This is something of a follow-up to my question Draw textures to canvas async / in sequence deletes old textures, but with a different approach recommended to me by a friend. I am just learning WebGL, so bear with me.

My goal

• Load images asyncronously
• Render those images to a single webgl canvas in a side-by-side "tiled" fashion. Each image will contain coordinates to dictate where in the canvas it should be rendered
• On each async image load, treat the whole canvas as a single texture, then apply some image processing in the shader to the texture as a whole

Using a framebuffer

My understanding is that you can create a framebuffer, render textures to it, and then render the framebuffer to a target texture, and then render the target texture to the screen.

// First I create the frame buffer, and a target texture to render to,
// and attach the texture to the framebuffer
const fb = gl.createFramebuffer();
gl.bindFramebuffer(gl.FRAMEBUFFER, fb);
const targetTexture = gl.createTexture();
gl.framebufferTexture2D(
gl.FRAMEBUFFER,
gl.COLOR_ATTACHMENT0,
gl.TEXTURE_2D,
targetTexture,
0
);

My idea is that on every image load, you can create a texture from the image. After enabling the vertex attributes on each texture, you can then call drawArrays, which would then draw to the framebuffer. After doing that, you should be able to unbind the framebuffer, then call drawArrays again, which should...draw the framebuffer to the screen? This is where I am getting confused:

// Let's pretend we have a few tile urls in an array for now:
tiles.forEach((tile) => {
  const image = new Image();
  image.onload = () => render(image, tile);
  image.src = tile.path;
});

function render(tileImage: HTMLImageElement, tile: Tile) {
	// look up where the vertex data needs to go.
	var positionLocation = gl.getAttribLocation(program, 'a_position');
	var texcoordLocation = gl.getAttribLocation(program, 'a_texCoord');

	// Create a buffer to put three 2d clip space points in
	var positionBuffer = gl.createBuffer();

	gl.bindBuffer(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, positionBuffer);
	// Set a rectangle the same size as the image.
    // see Appending of question for details
	setRectangle(
		gl,
		tile.position.x,
		tile.position.y,
		tileImage.width,
		tileImage.height
	);

	// provide texture coordinates for the rectangle.
	var texcoordBuffer = gl.createBuffer();
	gl.bindBuffer(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, texcoordBuffer);

	gl.bufferData(
		gl.ARRAY_BUFFER,
		new Float32Array([
			0.0, 0.0,
	        1.0, 0.0,
	        0.0, 1.0,
	        0.0, 1.0,
	        1.0, 0.0,
	        1.0, 1.0,
		]),
		gl.STATIC_DRAW
	);

	// Create a texture and bing it to the gl context
	const texture = gl.createTexture();
	gl.bindTexture(gl.TEXTURE_2D, texture);

	// Set the parameters so we can render any size image.
	gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_2D, gl.TEXTURE_WRAP_S, gl.CLAMP_TO_EDGE);
	gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_2D, gl.TEXTURE_WRAP_T, gl.CLAMP_TO_EDGE);
	gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_2D, gl.TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, gl.NEAREST);
	gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_2D, gl.TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, gl.NEAREST);

	// Upload the tile image to the texture
	gl.texImage2D(
		gl.TEXTURE_2D,
		0,
		gl.RGBA,
		gl.RGBA,
		gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE,
		tileImage
	);

	// lookup uniforms
	var resolutionLocation = gl.getUniformLocation(program, 'u_resolution');
	var textureSizeLocation = gl.getUniformLocation(program, 'u_textureSize');

	// Tell WebGL how to convert from clip space to pixels
	gl.viewport(0, 0, gl.canvas.width, gl.canvas.height);

	// Tell it to use our program (pair of shaders)
	gl.useProgram(program);

	// Turn on the position attribute
	gl.enableVertexAttribArray(positionLocation);
	gl.bindBuffer(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, positionBuffer);
	gl.vertexAttribPointer(positionLocation, 2, gl.FLOAT, false, 0, 0);

	// Turn on the texcoord attribute
	gl.enableVertexAttribArray(texcoordLocation);
	gl.bindBuffer(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, texcoordBuffer);
	gl.vertexAttribPointer(texcoordLocation, 2, gl.FLOAT, false, 0, 0);

	// set the resolution and size of image
	gl.uniform2f(resolutionLocation, gl.canvas.width, gl.canvas.height);
	gl.uniform2f(textureSizeLocation, 256, 256);

    // bind frame buffer and draw arrays - draw TO the framebuffer?
	gl.bindFramebuffer(gl.FRAMEBUFFER, fb);
	gl.drawArrays(gl.TRIANGLES, 0, 6);

    // Unbind framebuffer and draw...to the canvas?
	gl.bindFramebuffer(gl.FRAMEBUFFER, null);
	gl.drawArrays(gl.TRIANGLES, 0, 6);
}

It is in the last few lines that I get confused. The reason I know this is not working, is because if I put an artificial delay on each image load, you can see that each image is drawn to the canvas, but when the next one is drawn, the previous one disappears.

Codesandbox demonstrating the issue

I have read many discussions on this. In WebGL display framebuffer?, where gman shows how to render to a framebuffer, then to the screen, for a single image. The question How to work with framebuffers in webgl? is very similar as well. Most of the questions I've found have been either like this - rendering a simple single image to a framebuffer, then to the screen - or far beyond my level at this point, i.e. using a framebuffer to render to the faces of a spinning cube. I can't seem to find any information on how to take simple 2d images, and render them to a webgl canvas in an async way.

I have also seen several recommendations to draw images to a 2d canvas, and use that as the source of a singular 2d texture. For example, in the question Can I create big texture from other small textures in webgl?, gman recommends:

> If you have to do it at runtime for some reason then the easiest way to combine images into a single texture is to first load all your images, then use the canvas 2D api to draw them into a 2D canvas, then use that canvas as a source for texImage2D in WebGL

I don't understand why this is preferable.

How can I take these images async and stitch them together within a single webgl canvas?

Appendix:

export function setRectangle(
	gl: WebGLRenderingContext,
	x: number,
	y: number,
	width: number,
	height: number
) {
	const x1 = x,
		x2 = x + width,
		y1 = y,
		y2 = y + height;

	gl.bufferData(
		gl.ARRAY_BUFFER,
		// prettier-ignore
		new Float32Array([
      x1, y1, 
      x2, y1, 
      x1, y2, 
      x1, y2, 
      x2, y1, 
      x2, y2]),
		gl.STATIC_DRAW
	);
}

For a short answer, there is a simple fix, use:

canvas.getContext("webgl", { preserveDrawingBuffer: true })

instead of

canvas.getContext("webgl")

You can also get rid of all the framebuffer stuff, it is not actually doing anything in your program. You are rendering to the framebuffer, then you are rendering to the canvas, but you are not rendering from the framebuffer to the canvas. This is mostly explained in this answer but it might not be clear that with the framebufferTexture2D call you are saying that the framebuffer will render to the given texture, which you will need to later use as a source again. In your code there is no separation between the texture you are rendering to the framebuffer and the texture you want to "store" all the tiles in.

So why does the fix above work? Ignoring all the framebuffer stuff (which, again, does nothing in your program), you are rendering to the canvas across multiple frames. WebGL by default clears the canvas between frames unless the preserveDrawingBuffer flag is set, explaining why the previous tiles you rendered disappear every time you draw another one. See this answer.

Edit: how to actually make use of the framebuffer?

To make this work with the framebuffer as intended, a couple of changes need to be made.

1. You created targetTexture, i.e. the texture to which you want to render the composed tile. What is its size and format? This is never specified and GL does not infer it; these parameters can in general differ from the main canvas you are drawing to.

   const targetTexture = gl.createTexture();
   gl.bindTexture(gl.TEXTURE_2D, targetTexture);
   gl.texImage2D(gl.TEXTURE_2D, 0, gl.RGBA,
       512, 512, 0,
       gl.RGBA, gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE, null);
   gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_2D, gl.TEXTURE_WRAP_S, gl.CLAMP_TO_EDGE);
   gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_2D, gl.TEXTURE_WRAP_T, gl.CLAMP_TO_EDGE);
   gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_2D, gl.TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, gl.NEAREST);
   gl.texParameteri(gl.TEXTURE_2D, gl.TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, gl.NEAREST);
   

   You can refer to the documentation of texImage2D for the parameters. They are similar to your existing texImage2D call, but the width and height must be provided, because we are passing null for the texture "source"—there is no texture yet, we just want GL to create an empty one for us.

2. In the render function, you want to perform two draw calls, corresponding to the two drawArrays calls you already have. These draw calls should have the uniforms and framebuffers set differently from one another:

   1. The framebuffer for the first call must be bound to fb to draw to it, then for the second call to null to draw to the canvas. (Already done in your code.)
   2. The texture for the first call must be texture (the new tile to be rendered), then for the second call targetTexture to make use of the framebuffer.

   // before the second drawArrays call
   gl.bindTexture(gl.TEXTURE_2D, targetTexture);
   

   3. To make things scale correctly, the textureSizeLocation uniform should be set to the framebuffer resolution for the second draw call:

   // before the second drawArrays call
   gl.uniform2f(textureSizeLocation, 512, 512);
   

   4. The position buffer must specify a tile/quarter of the framebuffer in the first call, but the full canvas in the second call.

   // before the second drawArrays call
   gl.bindBuffer(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, positionBuffer);
   setRectangle(
     gl,
     0,
     0,
     gl.canvas.width,
     gl.canvas.height
   );
   

   5. (This inverts the image vertically, somewhere a sign needs to be flipped, for example in the previous point.)

This works, but let me also note that many of the operations done in render do not need to be done every time: for example, the program only needs to be attached once, the uniform and buffer locations can only be looked up once, etc etc. Data you put into attribute buffers also stays there over calls. (Unless there are other, unrelated GL calls that might take place in between the render calls: in which case, at least re-binding the program might be a good idea.)