Vulkan Cookbook

Loading texture data from a file

Texturing is a commonly used technique. It allows us to place an image on the surface of an object in a similar way to how we put wallpaper on walls. This way we don't need to increase the geometric complexity of a mesh, which would be both too complex for the hardware to process it, and would use too much memory. Texturing is simpler to handle and allows us to achieve better, more convincing results.

Textures can be generated procedurally (dynamically in code), but usually their contents are read from images or photos.