glColorPointerGLint

The glColorPointer function in OpenGL is used to specify the location and data format of an array of color values that will be used for rendering. It does not immediately cause colors to be assigned to vertices; instead, it sets up a pointer to this data. This array will be accessed by subsequent calls to functions like glDrawArrays or glDrawElements.

The function takes several arguments. The first, size, specifies the number of components per color (typically 3 for RGB or 4 for RGBA). The second argument, type, indicates the data type of the color components, such as GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, GL_FLOAT, or GL_INT. The third argument, stride, specifies the byte offset between the beginning of one color entry and the beginning of the next in the array. A stride of zero means that the colors are tightly packed. The final argument, pointer, is a pointer to the first element of the color array in memory.

When vertex arrays are enabled, using a function like glEnableClientState with GL_COLOR_ARRAY, OpenGL will use the data provided by glColorPointer to determine the color for each vertex processed by drawing commands. This allows for efficient rendering of objects with per-vertex color attributes.