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

, a texture atlas (also called a spritesheet or an image sprite in 2D game development) is an image containing multiple smaller images, usually packed together to reduce overall dimensions. An atlas can consist of uniformly-sized images or images of varying dimensions. A sub-image is drawn using custom texture coordinates to pick it out of the atlas.

Benefits

In an application where many small textures are used frequently, it is often more efficient to store the textures in a texture atlas which is treated as a single unit by the

graphics hardware Graphics hardware is computer hardware that generates computer graphics and allows them to be shown on a display, usually using a graphics card (video card) in combination with a device driver to create the images on the screen. Types Grap ...

. This reduces both the disk I/O overhead and the overhead of a context switch by increasing memory locality. Careful alignment may be needed to avoid bleeding between sub textures when used with mipmapping and texture compression. In

web development Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web applications, ...

, images are packed into a sprite sheet to reduce the number of image resources that need to be fetched in order to display a page.

Gallery

File:Tile set.png, A texture atlas for a

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

File:Texture Atlas.png, A texture atlas of

glyph A glyph ( ) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A ...

s File:BOE tile set.png, Sprite sheet for the video game '' Blades of Exile'' File:Makehuman import.jpg, A human model and "

skin Skin is the layer of usually soft, flexible outer tissue covering the body of a vertebrate animal, with three main functions: protection, regulation, and sensation. Other animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton, have different ...

" from the MakeHuman project, as viewed in the program,

Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer (from Latin ''mixus, the PPP of miscere eng. to Mix)'' or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsify food and other substances. A stationary ...

References

{{reflist

External links

Explanations and algorithms

Texture Atlas Whitepaper
- A whitepaper by

NVIDIA Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...

which explains the technique.
Practical Texture Atlases
- A guide on using a texture atlas (and the pros and cons).
A thousand ways to pack the bin
- Review and benchmark of the different packing algorithms
Sprite Sheets - Essential Facts Every Game Developer Should Know
- Funny video explaining the benefits of using sprite sheets
What is Texture Atlas?
- Blog post that explain atlas textures and their usage areas

Tools

TexturePacker
- sprite sheet packer with graphical user interface and tons of options. Works with almost all game engines.
LibGDX texture packer
- Open source texture packer utility from libGDX
Texture Atlas Maker
- Open source texture atlas utility for 2D OpenGL games.
SpriteMapper
- Open source texture atlas (sprite map) utility including an

Apache Ant Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes for Java applications which originated from the Apache Tomcat project in early 2000 as a replacement for the Make build tool of Unix. It is similar to Make, but is implement ...

task.
CC0 Atlas Textures
- Copyright-free atlas texture library
SprAtlas
- simple Free and Open Source atlas packer with multiple options 3D rendering Computer graphics