Texture mapping is a method for defining high frequency detail, surface texture, or color information on a computer-generated graphic or 3D model.
Some type of map used in this example:
- Diffuse map
- A diffuse map is a texture you use to define a surface’s main colour.
- Normal map
- It is used to add details without using more polygons. A common use of this technique is to greatly enhance the appearance and details of a low polygon model by generating a normal map from a high polygon model or height map.
- Ambient Occlusion map
- It is used to calculate how exposed each point in a scene is to ambient lighting. For example, the interior of a tube is typically more occluded (and hence darker) than the exposed outer surfaces, and the deeper you go inside the tube, the more occluded (and darker) the lighting becomes. .
- Specular map
- Specular maps are the maps you use to define a surface’s shininess and highlight colour.
- Displacement map
- Displacement mapping is an alternative computer graphics technique in contrast to bump mapping, normal mapping, and parallax mapping, using a (procedural-) texture- or height map to cause an effect where the actual geometric position of points over the textured surface are displaced, often along the local surface normal, according to the value the texture function evaluates to at each point on the surface. It gives surfaces a great sense of depth and detail, permitting in particular self-occlusion, self-shadowing and silhouettes; on the other hand, it is the most costly of this class of techniques owing to the large amount of additional geometry.
