I am performing a video effect that requires dual pass rendering (the texture needs to be passed through multiple shader programs). Attaching a SurfaceTexture to a GL_TEXTURE_EXTERNAL_OES that is passed in the constructor does not seem to be a solution, since the displayed result is only rendered once.
One solution I am aware of is that the first rendering can be done to a FrameBuffer, and then the resulting texture can be rendered to where it actually gets displayed.
However, it seems that a SurfaceTexture must be attached to a GL_TEXTURE_EXTERNAL_OES texture, and not a FrameBuffer. I'm not sure if there is a workaround around this, or if there is a different approach I should take.
Thank you.
SurfaceTexture receives a buffer of graphics data and essentially wraps it up as an "external" texture. If it helps to see source code, start in updateTexImage(). Note the name of the class ("GLConsumer") is a more accurate description of the function than "SurfaceTexture": it consumes frames of graphic data and makes them available to GLES.
SurfaceTexture is expected to work with formats that OpenGL ES doesn't "naturally" work with, notably YUV, so it always uses external textures.