Render to texture problem with alpha

Question

When I render to texture, and then draw the same image, it seems to make everything darker. To get this image:

I'm rendering the upper-left square with color (1, 1, 1, .8) to a texture, then rendering that texture, plus the middle square (same color) to another texture, then finally that texture plus the lower-right square (same color) to the screen.

As you can see, each time I render to texture, everything gets a little darker.

My render-to-texture code looks like: (I'm using OpenGL ES on the iPhone)

// gen framebuffer
GLuint framebuffer;
glGenFramebuffersOES(1, &framebuffer);
glBindFramebufferOES(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES, framebuffer);

// gen texture
GLuint texture;
glGenTextures(1, &texture);

glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D);
glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture);
glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);
glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);
glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, width, height, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, 0);
glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0);
glDisable(GL_TEXTURE_2D);

// hook it up
glFramebufferTexture2DOES(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0_OES, GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture, 0);
if(glCheckFramebufferStatusOES(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES) != GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE_OES))
   return false;

// set up drawing
glBindFramebufferOES(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES, framebuffer);
glViewport(0, 0, Screen::Width, Screen::Height);

glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();
glOrtho(0, Screen::Width, 0, Screen::Height, -1, 1);

glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
glLoadIdentity();
glColor4f(1, 1, 1, 1);

// do whatever drawing we'll do here
Draw();

glBindFramebufferOES(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES, 0);

Is there anything that I'm doing wrong here? Do you need more code to figure it out? What might be going on here?

Answer 1

I'm only guessing:

Drawing the first texture gives you 204 (0.8 * 255) in the RGB and alpha channels. When you draw for the second time (with GL_BLEND enabled, I presume), you're getting the light gray 204 RGB with 80% alpha which gives you a medium gray.

Solution: use glBlendFunc(GL_ONE, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA) and premultiply your colors.