Hi i'm trying to use a 3d texture in opengl to implement volume rendering. Each voxel has an rgba colour value and is currently rendered as a screen facing quad.(for testing purposes). I just can't seem to get the sampler to give me a colour value in the shader. The quads always end up black. When I change the shader to generate a colour (based on xyz coords) then it works fine. I'm loading the texture with the following code: glGenTextures(1, &tex3D); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_3D, tex3D); unsigned int colours[8]; colours[0] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Blue); colours[1] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Red); colours[2] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Green); colours[3] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Magenta); colours[4] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Cyan); colours[5] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Yellow); colours[6] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::White); colours[7] = Colour::AsBytes<unsigned int>(Colour::Black); glTexImage3D(GL_TEXTURE_3D, 0, GL_RGBA, 2, 2, 2, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, colours); The colours array contains the correct data, i.e. the first four bytes have values 0, 0, 255, 255 for blue. Before rendering I bind the texture to the 2nd texture unit like so: glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE1); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_3D, tex3D); And render with the following code: shaders["DVR"]->Use(); shaders["DVR"]->Uniforms["volTex"].SetValue(1); shaders["DVR"]->Uniforms["World"].SetValue(Mat4(vl_one)); shaders["DVR"]->Uniforms["viewProj"].SetValue(cam->GetViewTransform() * cam->GetProjectionMatrix()); QuadDrawer::DrawQuads(8); I have used these classes for setting shader params before and they work fine. The quaddrawer draws eight instanced quads. The vertex shader code looks like this: #version 330 layout(location = 0) in vec2 position; layout(location = 1) in vec2 texCoord; uniform sampler3D volTex; ivec3 size = ivec3(2, 2, 2); uniform mat4 World; uniform mat4 viewProj; smooth out vec4 colour; void main() { vec3 texCoord3D; int num = gl_InstanceID; texCoord3D.x = num % size.x; texCoord3D.y = (num / size.x) % size.y; texCoord3D.z = (num / (size.x * size.y)); texCoord3D /= size; texCoord3D *= 2.0; texCoord3D -= 1.0; colour = texture(volTex, texCoord3D); //colour = vec4(texCoord3D, 1.0); gl_Position = viewProj * World * vec4(texCoord3D, 1.0) + (vec4(position.x, position.y, 0.0, 0.0) * 0.05); } uncommenting the line where I set the colour value equal to the texcoord works fine, and makes the quads coloured. The fragment shader is simply: #version 330 smooth in vec4 colour; out vec4 outColour; void main() { outColour = colour; } So my question is, what am I doing wrong, why is the sampler not getting any colour values from the 3d texture? [EDIT] Figured it out but can't self answer (new user): As soon as I posted this I figured it out, I'll put the answer up to help anyone else (it's not specifically a 3d texture issue, and i've also fallen afoul of it before, D'oh!). I didn't generate mipmaps for the texture, and the default magnification/minification filters weren't set to either GL_LINEAR, or GL_NEAREST. Boom! no textures. Same thing happens with 2d textures.