OpenGL Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, Version 4.3, Eighth Edition

Rendering to Texture Maps

In addition to using framebuffer objects (as described in “Framebuffer Objects” on Page 180 in Chapter 4) for offscreen rendering, you can also use FBOs to update texture maps. You might do this to indicate changes in the texture for a surface (such as damage to a wall in a game) or to update values in a lookup table, if you’re doing GPGPU-like computations. In these cases, you bind a level of a texture map as a framebuffer attachment. After rendering, the texture map can be detached from the framebuffer object, and used for subsequent rendering.

Note

Nothing prevents you from reading from a texture that is simultaneously bound as a framebuffer attachment for writing. In this scenario, called a framebuffer rendering ...