Re-using one texture for multiple OpenGL Quads

Question

I've been looking over my code and I'm just wondering, when I set a texture for say, 20 quads that need to use the same texture, it seems as though I'm creating a new texture each time...... surely this isn't efficient?

How can I make sure that 20 quads that use the same texture do just that, use only 1 rather than creating 20 copies of it?

I just can't work out how I can do this. I know I can change the texID after applying the texture so that all quads that use the same texture, will have the same Texture ID, but this isn't really the issue I'm facing.

Of course, I may be completely misunderstanding how OpenGL deals with textures and my code may be OK :-/

Code:

    public void setTexture(GLSurfaceView view, Bitmap imgTexture){
        this.imgTexture=imgTexture;                 
        //Create program from Utils class
        iProgId = Utils.LoadProgram(strVShader, strFShader);
        //Return location of u_basemap
        iBaseMap = GLES20.glGetUniformLocation(iProgId, "u_baseMap");
            //Return location of attribute variables
        iPosition = GLES20.glGetAttribLocation(iProgId, "a_position");
        iTexCoords = GLES20.glGetAttribLocation(iProgId, "a_texCoords");
        //Return usable texture ID from Utils class
                texID = Utils.LoadTexture(view, imgTexture);

}

And....

public static int LoadTexture(GLSurfaceView view, Bitmap imgTex){

    //Array for texture
    int textures[] = new int[1];
    try {
        //Return texture name in textures Array
        GLES20.glGenTextures(1, textures, 0);
        //Bind textures
        GLES20.glBindTexture(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, textures[0]);
        //Set parameters
        GLES20.glTexParameterf(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GLES20.GL_LINEAR);
        GLES20.glTexParameterf(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GLES20.GL_LINEAR);

        //Apply the texture to the image loaded
        GLUtils.texImage2D(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, imgTex, 0);

        //clamp the texture
        GLES20.glTexParameteri(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T,GLES20.GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE);        
    } catch (Exception e){          
    }
    //Increase texture count by one
    textureCount++;
    return textures[0];
}

Edit

I've attempted the suggestion below (just calling glBindTextures()) however, I'm not having any luck. Clearly I'm not understanding this correctly.

Lets say I have 2 sprites, Object1 and Object2.

I call the following:

object1.setTexture(this, myAtlasTexture); //Calls setTexture (See above)

This works and sets the texture on this sprite, so I can now draw it.

Now I want object2 to use the same texture. So I don't want to call this again and create a new texture (I believe this is a bad idea) - I simply want to use the texture that was previously created when I called setTexure on object1.

So, instead of calling setTexture on object 2, I do the following:

GLES20.glBindTexture(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureIDOfObject1);

(Note textureIDOfObject1 is just that, I just query object1 to obtain its texture ID).

Answer 1

So I worked out how to do this:

Lets say I have object1, object2, object3 etc.... and these objects all use a common texture.

I call my setTexture method (as detailed in my question) for object1 and then, instead of calling setTextures on the remaining objects, I created a new method and called that instead.

public void bindExistingTexture(int textureToBind){

        //As before
        iProgId = Utils.LoadProgram(strVShader, strFShader);
        iBaseMap = GLES20.glGetUniformLocation(iProgId, "u_baseMap");
        iPosition = GLES20.glGetAttribLocation(iProgId, "a_position");
        iTexCoords = GLES20.glGetAttribLocation(iProgId, "a_texCoords");

        //Here, instead of creating and loading another texture, we simply bind an existing texture
        GLES20.glBindTexture(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureToBind);
        //And update the texID value used in rendering methods
        texID = textureToBind;

}

So, it's pretty much the same method, but instead of:

texID = Utils.LoadTexture(view, imgTexture);

I simply re-bind an existing texture and update the local variable to match.

My call would look something like this:

    object1.setTexture(this, myAtlasGraphic);
    object2.bindExistingTexture(object1.texID);

This has greatly reduced my app loading time.