- Diffuse maps - This is a 3 channel texture that controls the colour of the object.
- Normal maps - This is a 3 channel texture that allows the renderer to add fake lighting to the object to give more depth - often used with height map for extra detail.
- Height maps, this is a grayscale 1 channel texture that controls how high tesselated vertices or the depth of parallax occlusion.
- Ambient occlusion maps - grayscale 1 channel, this gives extra shadows to object in places that the renderer cant or doesn't get.
- Specular maps - grayscale 1 channel, this controls how shiny the object is.
- Alpha maps - grayscale, 1 channel of areas that are transparent but are still part of tne mesh for example glass.
- metalic maps - grayscale of areas of the mesh that should render as metal.
- Alpha mask maps - black or white, 0 or 1 pixel values of where the model should not be rendered.
How does a normal map work?
Each channel of the texture tells the renderer which way and how much to alter the lighting of the object. the Blue channel deternines how much depth should be given, the red channel is for the x axis and the green channel is for the y axis. when all of these channels are combined it allows the renderer to fake the lighting.
So how do we create these maps?
You can use various programs to automatically create maps for 3D models such as Substance painter / Designer or you can create your own maps using an image editor.
To create a normal map in gimp all you need to do is to open an image and then go to filters > Maps > Normal map.
Then a new window will open which will allow us to change setting such as the filter type, scale and strength. I've found that the Prewitt 5x5 filter wors the best because it seems to get more detail.
How are textured and displayed?
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| https://medium.com/@thelouishong/shader-tutorial-flow-map-4410af832a8d |
Textures use something called a UV Map which maps an area of a texture to a part of a mesh. The UV map values range from 0,0 to 1,1.
