Understanding Textures for Game Design

How Textures Work

• A texture is an image applied to a 3D model. Textures wrap around an image the way a patterned cloth drapes over an object in the real world. For simple objects, an algorithm can project the texture onto the model, automatically distorting the image where appropriate. For more complex objects, the modeler must provide a pattern of vertexes as well as a custom-made texture.

Limitations of Textures

• Bad texturing leads to unrealistic graphics. The common mistakes amateurs make is to make a texture that looks too distinctive, then repeat it regularly. This creates an appearance of a pattern rather than one smooth, natural texture. In addition, while a texture can simulate a light source, if additional light sources are present, the shadows in the final scene will look inconsistent.

Texture Baking

• Texture baking is the process of saving multiple textures or effects onto a single texture, which is then applied to a simple model to give it the appearance of a more complex figure with fewer resources. For instance, a realistic human model is complex and curved, with many more vertexes and polygons than is feasible to render in real-time for a video game. Instead, you can make two meshes for the model: one complex model for texture baking and one simpler model to use in the game. Texture the complex model like a realistic human: with complex facial features including cheekbones, eyes and hairs with their own textures, and apply an ambient light source to get realistic shading. Then texture bake that image and apply the resulting image to the simpler model.

Textures as Backgrounds

• A lot of tricks for making backgrounds look more natural. The first is to eliminate seams between textures. Seams occur when the left of a texture block does not completely transition to the right. Place multiple occurrences of the texture adjacent to each other and see if you can see the place where one ends and the other begins. In addition, layer several textures on top of one another, with different sizes and spacing to achieve a more random-looking natural pattern.