Working with Textures
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.
