Category Texturing

This is a list of textures used in games, the texture maps that are used as visual layers in game shaders, the texturing techniques that are used to create these maps, and the file formats that are used to store them.

Popular Texture Types

For game assets the most commonly used texture types are Diffuse, Emissive, Normal, Opacity, and Specular Color. However the types you use will be dictated by the asset itself, and the Art Direction for the project.

Bump Maps

Color Maps

Environment Maps

Light Maps

Specular Maps

Transparency Maps

Texture Techniques

See also:

• 2D Tutorials: Painting and texturing tutorials.

  Tutorials about concept art for environments.

  Tutorials for creating environment textures.

• Painting Tutorials: Polycount forum thread with lots of links to painting tutorials.
• Texturing for Dummies: A PDF overview of texturing and texture types.
• Using the Photoshop Curves Tool: Exactly how the Curves tool works, very informative!

Texture Formats

Texture file formats come in two basic categories: those that are used at runtime (in-game), versus those that are used by artists in general but have to be converted to be used "live" in-game. Two of the main reasons for conversion are to reduce memory load and to work well with filtering. is for file formats used in-game: is for general-use file formats: