glDrawElements

render primitives from array data

Signature

glDrawElements( GLenum ( mode ) , GLsizei ( count ) , GLenum ( type ) , const void * ( indices ) )-> void
glDrawElements( mode , count , type , indices )
glDrawElementsui( mode , indices )
glDrawElementsus( mode , indices )

Parameters

VariablesDescription
mode
Specifies what kind of primitives to render. Symbolic constants GL_POINTS , GL_LINE_STRIP , GL_LINE_LOOP , GL_LINES , GL_LINE_STRIP_ADJACENCY , GL_LINES_ADJACENCY , GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP , GL_TRIANGLE_FAN , GL_TRIANGLES , GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP_ADJACENCY , GL_TRIANGLES_ADJACENCY and GL_PATCHES are accepted.
count
Specifies the number of elements to be rendered.
type
Specifies the type of the values in indices . Must be one of GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE , GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT , or GL_UNSIGNED_INT .
indices
Specifies a pointer to the location where the indices are stored.

Description

glDrawElements specifies multiple geometric primitives with very few subroutine calls. Instead of calling a GL function to pass each individual vertex, normal, texture coordinate, edge flag, or color, you can prespecify separate arrays of vertices, normals, and so on, and use them to construct a sequence of primitives with a single call to glDrawElements .
When glDrawElements is called, it uses count sequential elements from an enabled array, starting at indices to construct a sequence of geometric primitives. mode specifies what kind of primitives are constructed and how the array elements construct these primitives. If more than one array is enabled, each is used.
Vertex attributes that are modified by glDrawElements have an unspecified value after glDrawElements returns. Attributes that aren't modified maintain their previous values.

Notes

GL_LINE_STRIP_ADJACENCY , GL_LINES_ADJACENCY , GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP_ADJACENCY and GL_TRIANGLES_ADJACENCY are available only if the GL version is 3.2 or greater.

Errors

GL_INVALID_ENUM is generated if mode is not an accepted value.
GL_INVALID_VALUE is generated if count is negative.
GL_INVALID_OPERATION is generated if a geometry shader is active and mode is incompatible with the input primitive type of the geometry shader in the currently installed program object.
GL_INVALID_OPERATION is generated if a non-zero buffer object name is bound to an enabled array or the element array and the buffer object's data store is currently mapped.

Version Support

glDrawElements

See Also

Copyright

Copyright
1991-2006 Silicon Graphics, Inc. Copyright
2010-2014 Khronos Group. This document is licensed under the SGI Free Software B License. For details, see .

Sample Code References

The following code samples have been found which appear to reference the functions described here. Take care that the code may be old, broken or not even use PyOpenGL.

glDrawElements
OpenGLContext OpenGLContext/scenegraph/quadrics.py Lines: 64
OpenGLContext tests/shader_6.py Lines: 308
OpenGLContext tests/shader_11.py Lines: 311
OpenGLContext tests/shader_7.py Lines: 327
OpenGLContext tests/shader_sphere.py Lines: 110
OpenGLContext tests/shader_12.py Lines: 313
OpenGLContext tests/shader_9.py Lines: 377
OpenGLContext tests/shader_10.py Lines: 324
OpenGLContext tests/transforms_1.py Lines: 294
OpenGLContext tests/shader_8.py Lines: 245
Gloopy gloopy/view/render.py Lines: 140
Visvis wobjects/polygonalModeling.py Lines: 1065
Visvis utils/cropper.py Lines: 373, 399, 406, 429
{GPL3} OpenGL-Programmable 05-shader.py Lines: 191
{GPL3} OpenGL-Programmable 07-attrib.py Lines: 210
{GPL3} OpenGL-Programmable 03-array.py Lines: 106
{GPL3} OpenGL-Programmable 09-gles2.py Lines: 245
{GPL3} OpenGL-Programmable 06-perpixel.py Lines: 199
{GPL3} OpenGL-Programmable 10-gl3.2core.py Lines: 255
{GPL3} OpenGL-Programmable 04-vbo.py Lines: 125
{GPL3} OpenGL-Programmable 08-pbo.py Lines: 221