glColorMaterial

  • Article

The glColorMaterial function causes a material color to track the current color.

void glColorMaterial(
  GLenum face,  GLenum mode);

Parameters

  • face
    Specifies whether front, back, or both front and back material parameters should track the current color. Accepted values are GL_FRONT, GL_BACK, and GL_FRONT_AND_BACK. The default value is GL_FRONT_AND_BACK.
  • mode
    Specifies which of several material parameters track the current color. Accepted values are GL_EMISSION, GL_AMBIENT, GL_DIFFUSE, GL_SPECULAR, and GL_AMBIENT_AND_DIFFUSE. The default value is GL_AMBIENT_AND_DIFFUSE.

Remarks

The glColorMaterial function specifies which material parameters track the current color. When you enable GL_COLOR_MATERIAL, for each of the material or materials specified by face, the material parameter or parameters specified by mode track the current color at all times. Enable and disable GL_COLOR_MATERIAL with the functions glEnable and glDisable, which you call with GL_COLOR_MATERIAL as their argument. By default, GL_COLOR_MATERIAL is disabled.

With glColorMaterial, you can change a subset of material parameters for each vertex using only the glColor function, without calling glMaterial. If you are going to specify only such a subset of parameters for each vertex, it is better to do so with glColorMaterial than with glMaterial.

The following functions retrieve information related to glColorMaterial:

glGet with argument GL_COLOR_MATERIAL_PARAMETER

glGet with argument GL_COLOR_MATERIAL_FACE

glIsEnabled with argument GL_COLOR_MATERIAL

Error Codes

The following are the error codes this function generates, along with their conditions.

Error code Condition
GL_INVALID_ENUM face or mode was not an accepted value.
GL_INVALID_OPERATION glColorMaterial was called between a call to glBegin and the corresponding call to glEnd.

Requirements

**  Windows NT/2000:** Requires Windows NT 3.5 or later.
**  Windows 95/98:** Requires Windows 95 or later. Available as a redistributable for Windows 95.
**  Header:** Declared in Gl.h.
**  Library:** Use Opengl32.lib.

See Also

glBegin, glColor, glDisable, glEnable, glEnd, glGet, glIsEnabled, glLight, glLightModel, glMaterial