Working with Textures

Open 3D Engine (O3DE), the successor to Lumberyard, is now available in Developer Preview. Download O3DE or visit the AWS Game Tech blog to learn more.

Textures can be used to provide color, depth, and details to a surface. For example, a repeating brick-and-mortar texture can be used to simulate a brick wall, rather than creating geometry for each individual brick.

A texture is an image file that consists of a number of pixels, called texels, each occupying a coordinate determined by the width and height of the texture. These coordinates are then mapped into values ranging from 0 to 1 along a U (width) and V (height) axis. This process produces a 2D texture map that is stored in a .DDS file.

In turn, the process of mapping the UV coordinates of a texture map to the corresponding UV coordinates at the vertices on a 3D object is called UV mapping. This in effect wraps the 2D texture onto the 3D object.

Textures are dictated by, and applied by, the shader that is selected for a material. There can be multiple textures applied by the shader for a material.

Textures used in Lumberyard are usually created with Adobe Photoshop or other DCC tool.

Topics

• Texture Map Types
• Texture Settings Editor
• Texture Best Practices
• Working with Diffuse Maps
• Working with Normal Maps
• Working with Gloss Maps
• Working with Detail Maps
• Working with Decals
• Displacement Maps and Tessellation