(This is the legacy documentation for SDL2, the previous stable version; SDL3 is the current stable version.)

SDL_LockTextureToSurface

Lock a portion of the texture for write-only pixel access, and expose it as a SDL surface.

Header File

Syntax

int SDL_LockTextureToSurface(SDL_Texture *texture,
                    const SDL_Rect *rect,
                    SDL_Surface **surface);

Function Parameters

SDL_Texture *	texture	the texture to lock for access, which was created with `SDL_TEXTUREACCESS_STREAMING`.
const SDL_Rect *	rect	a pointer to the rectangle to lock for access. If the rect is NULL, the entire texture will be locked.
SDL_Surface **	surface	this is filled in with an SDL surface representing the locked area.

Return Value

(int) Returns 0 on success, or -1 if the texture is not valid or was not created with SDL_TEXTUREACCESS_STREAMING.

Remarks

Besides providing an SDL_Surface instead of raw pixel data, this function operates like SDL_LockTexture.

As an optimization, the pixels made available for editing don't necessarily contain the old texture data. This is a write-only operation, and if you need to keep a copy of the texture data you should do that at the application level.

You must use SDL_UnlockTexture() to unlock the pixels and apply any changes.

The returned surface is freed internally after calling SDL_UnlockTexture() or SDL_DestroyTexture(). The caller should not free it.

Version

This function is available since SDL 2.0.12.