Real-Time Rendering, Fourth Edition, 4th Edition

Chapter 6 Texturing

DOI: 10.1201/b22086-6

“All it takes is for the rendered image to look right.”

—Jim Blinn

A surface’s texture is its look and feel—just think of the texture of an oil painting. In computer graphics, texturing is a process that takes a surface and modifies its appearance at each location using some image, function, or other data source. As an example, instead of precisely representing the geometry of a brick wall, a color image of a brick wall is applied to a rectangle, consisting of two triangles. When the rectangle is viewed, the color image appears where the rectangle is located. Unless the viewer gets close to the wall, the lack of geometric detail will not be noticeable.

However, some textured brick walls can be ...