Every vertex in a polygon is assigned a texture coordinate (which in the 2d case is also known as UV coordinates). This process is akin to applying patterned paper to a plain white box. Texture maps may be acquired by scanning/ digital photography, designed in image manipulation software such as GIMP, Photoshop, or painted onto 3D surfaces directly in a 3D paint tool such as Mudbox or zbrush. Modern hardware often supports cube map textures with multiple faces for environment mapping. (They may be considered a modern evolution of tile map graphics). Multiple texture images may be combined in texture atlases or array textures to reduce state changes for modern hardware. Multiple texture maps (or channels) may be combined for control over specularity, normals, displacement, or subsurface scattering e.g. It is possible to use the alpha channel (which may be convenient to store in formats parsed by hardware) for other uses such as specularity. They usually contain RGB color data (either stored as direct color, compressed formats, or indexed color), and sometimes an additional channel for alpha blending ( RGBA) especially for billboards and decal overlay textures. Rendering APIs typically manage texture map resources (which may be located in device memory) as buffers or surfaces, and may allow ' render to texture' for additional effects such as post processing or environment mapping. For use with modern hardware, texture map data may be stored in swizzled or tiled orderings to improve cache coherency. They may have 1-3 dimensions, although 2 dimensions are most common for visible surfaces. They may be stored in common image file formats, referenced by 3d model formats or material definitions, and assembled into resource bundles. This may be a bitmap image or a procedural texture. 3.Ī texture map is an image applied (mapped) to the surface of a shape or polygon. For the album by Steve Roach, see Texture Maps: The Lost Pieces Vol.

3d texture software