Defining a texture transfers the image data to the graphics card
Named textures let you do this once, and then use the texture again later by referring to its ID (its "name").
textureID1 = glGenTextures(1) glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureID1) glTexImage2D(...) glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0) ... glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureID1) # Draw textured object