Texture mapping is a method for mapping a texture on a computer-generated graphic. Texture here can be high frequency

detail Detail(s) or The Detail(s) may refer to: Film and television * ''Details'' (film), a 2003 Swedish film * ''The Details'' (film), a 2011 American film * ''The Detail'', a Canadian television series * "The Detail" (''The Wire''), a television epis ...

surface texture Surface finish, also known as surface texture or surface topography, is the nature of a surface as defined by the three characteristics of lay, surface roughness, and waviness.. It comprises the small, local deviations of a surface from the per ...

, or

color Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are assoc ...

History

The original technique was pioneered by

Edwin Catmull Edwin Earl "Ed" Catmull (born March 31, 1945) is an American computer scientist who is the co-founder of Pixar and was the President of Walt Disney Animation Studios. He has been honored for his contributions to 3D computer graphics, including th ...

in 1974. Texture mapping originally referred to diffuse mapping, a method that simply mapped

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the ...

s from a texture to a 3D surface ("wrapping" the image around the object). In recent decades, the advent of multi-pass rendering,

multitexturing Texture mapping is a method for mapping a texture on a computer-generated graphic. Texture here can be high frequency detail, surface texture, or color. History The original technique was pioneered by Edwin Catmull in 1974. Texture mapping ...

, mipmaps, and more complex mappings such as

height mapping In computer graphics, a heightmap or heightfield is a raster graphics, raster image used mainly as Discrete Global Grid in digital elevation model#Types_of_DEM, secondary elevation modeling. Each pixel stores values, such as surface elevatio ...

bump mapping Bump mapping is a texture mapping technique in computer graphics for simulating bumps and wrinkles on the surface of an object. This is achieved by perturbing the surface normals of the object and using the perturbed normal during lighting cal ...

normal mapping In 3D computer graphics, normal mapping, or Dot3 bump mapping, is a texture mapping technique used for faking the lighting of bumps and dents – an implementation of bump mapping. It is used to add details without using more polygons. A common ...

displacement mapping Displacement mapping is an alternative computer graphics technique in contrast to bump, normal, and parallax mapping, using a texture or height map to cause an effect where the actual geometric position of points over the textured surface are ' ...

reflection mapping In computer graphics, environment mapping, or reflection mapping, is an efficient image-based lighting technique for approximating the appearance of a reflective surface by means of a precomputed texture. The texture is used to store the image of ...

, specular mapping, occlusion mapping, and many other variations on the technique (controlled by a

materials system 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for th ...

) have made it possible to simulate near- photorealism in real time by vastly reducing the number of

polygon In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure that is described by a finite number of straight line segments connected to form a closed ''polygonal chain'' (or ''polygonal circuit''). The bounded plane region, the bounding circuit, or the two to ...

s and lighting calculations needed to construct a realistic and functional 3D scene. Bumpandopacity

Texture maps

A is an image applied (mapped) to the surface of a shape or

. This may be a

bitmap image In computing, a bitmap is a mapping from some domain (for example, a range of integers) to bits. It is also called a bit array or bitmap index. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a particular bitmapping application: ...

or a

procedural texture In computer graphics, a procedural texture is a texture created using a mathematical description (i.e. an algorithm) rather than directly stored data. The advantage of this approach is low storage cost, unlimited texture resolution and easy text ...

. They may be stored in common

image file formats An Image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be ...

, referenced by 3d model formats or material definitions, and assembled into

resource bundles This is a list of file formats used by computers, organized by type. Filename extension it is usually noted in parentheses if they differ from the file format name or abbreviation. Many operating systems do not limit filenames to one extension s ...

. They may have 1-3 dimensions, although 2 dimensions are most common for visible surfaces. For use with modern hardware, texture map data may be stored in swizzled or tiled orderings to improve

cache coherency In computer architecture, cache coherence is the uniformity of shared resource data that ends up stored in multiple local caches. When clients in a system maintain caches of a common memory resource, problems may arise with incoherent data, whi ...

Rendering APIs Rendering APIs typically provide just enough functionality to abstract a graphics accelerator, focussing on rendering primitives, state management, command lists/command buffers; and as such differ from fully fledged 3D graphics libraries, 3D engin ...

typically manage texture map resources (which may be located in device memory) as buffers or surfaces, and may allow '

render to texture This is a glossary of terms relating to computer graphics. For more general computer hardware terms, see glossary of computer hardware terms. 0–9 A B ...

' for additional effects such as post processing or

environment mapping In computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized a ...

. They usually contain

RGB The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three addi ...

color data (either stored as

direct color Color depth or colour depth (see spelling differences), also known as bit depth, is either the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel, or the number of bits used for each color component of a single pixel. When referring to ...

, compressed formats, or

indexed color In computing, indexed color is a technique to manage digital images' colors in a limited fashion, in order to save computer memory and file storage, while speeding up display refresh and file transfers. It is a form of vector quantization comp ...

), and sometimes an additional channel for

alpha blending In computer graphics, alpha compositing or alpha blending is the process of combining one image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render picture elements (pixels) in separate pas ...

(

RGBA RGBA stands for red green blue alpha. While it is sometimes described as a color space, it is actually a three-channel RGB color model supplemented with a fourth ''alpha channel''. Alpha indicates how opaque each pixel is and allows an image to ...

) especially for

billboards A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

and ''decal'' overlay textures. It is possible to use the

alpha channel In computer graphics, alpha compositing or alpha blending is the process of combining one image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render picture elements (pixels) in separate pas ...

(which may be convenient to store in formats parsed by hardware) for other uses such as

specularity Specularity is the visual appearance of specular reflections. In computer graphics In computer graphics, it means the quantity used in three-dimensional (3D) rendering which represents the amount of reflectivity a surface has. It is a key com ...

. Multiple texture maps (or

channels Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to: Geography * Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water. Australia * Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...

) may be combined for control over

, normals,

displacement Displacement may refer to: Physical sciences Mathematics and Physics * Displacement (geometry), is the difference between the final and initial position of a point trajectory (for instance, the center of mass of a moving object). The actual path ...

, or

subsurface scattering Subsurface scattering (SSS), also known as subsurface light transport (SSLT), is a mechanism of light transport in which light that penetrates the surface of a translucent object is scattered by interacting with the material and exits the surfa ...

e.g. for skin rendering. Multiple texture images may be combined in

texture atlases In computer graphics, a texture atlas (also called a spritesheet or an image sprite in 2d computer graphics, 2d game development) is an image containing multiple smaller images, usually packed together to reduce overall dimensions. An atlas can con ...

array textures This is a glossary of terms relating to computer graphics. For more general computer hardware terms, see glossary of computer hardware terms. 0–9 A B ...

to reduce state changes for modern hardware. (They may be considered a modern evolution of tile map graphics). Modern hardware often supports

cube map In computer graphics, cube mapping is a method of environment mapping that uses the six faces of a cube as the map shape. The environment is projected onto the sides of a cube and stored as six square textures, or unfolded into six regions of a s ...

textures with multiple faces for environment mapping.

Creation

Texture maps may be acquired by scanning/

digital photography Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The digitized image ...

, designed in

image manipulation software In computer graphics, graphics software refers to a program or collection of programs that enable a person to manipulate images or models visually on a computer. Computer graphics can be classified into two distinct categories: raster graphic ...

such as GIMP,

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster ...

, or painted onto 3D surfaces directly in a

3D paint tool This is a glossary of terms relating to computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and comp ...

such as

Mudbox Mudbox is a proprietary {{Short pages monitor
Introduction into texture mapping using C and SDL
(PDF)
Programming a textured terrain
using XNA/DirectX, from www.riemers.net

Time Texturing
Texture mapping with bezier lines
Polynomial Texture Mapping
Interactive Relighting for Photos

Methods that can be used to interpolate a texture knowing the texture coords at the vertices of a polygon
3D Texturing Tools
{{DEFAULTSORT:Texture Mapping Computer graphics