Texture types

These are some of the map types used when texturing game models. In all cases, the different map types work together to produce the final image rendered onscreen. Artists create these maps in tandem to ensure the contribution from each work in balance.

The most common types are diffuse, emissive, normal, opacity, specular, and gloss. Which types you use will be dictated by the asset itself, and the Art Direction for the project. Depending on the needs of a game, multiple types may be packed into a single file.

In a [[PBR|Physically-based rendering] scheme, the common types are albedo, microsurface, reflectivity, and normal maps.

• Brief Considerations About Materials by Pedro Toldeo is an explanation of various map types, especially specular maps.
• Texturing for Dummies by Leigh van der Byl is a PDF overview of texturing and texture types. (alternative download site)

Color Maps

• Diffuse maps are used to create the albedo, the diffuse reflection of light from a surface.
• Albedo maps are a more specialized form of diffuse used in PBR shaders, and represent only the base colors of a surface.
• Emissive map (aka Glow) mimic surfaces that emit light, like a computer monitor, a vehicle dashboard at night, or magical effects.
• Masking for color variation/player customization.

Bump Maps

• Bump maps are often used to create the appearance of a more highly-detailed surface, instead of using complex geometry with a ton of vertices.
• Normal maps are essentially 3D bump maps that carry less detail but are more optimized for realtime games.

Environment Maps

Environment maps are typically used for reflective surfaces, showing the scene around the model, what is being reflected. This is a cheap hack to avoid rendering an accurate view of the actual scene, which is typically too slow to render in real time.

For more information, see Environment map.

Light Maps

Light maps are often used to store complex pre-computed lighting for a surface. pages: <<FullSearchCached(category:)>>

Specular Maps

Specular maps control how reflective the surface is, and can adjust the shape of the reflection. Specular usually simulates only the reflections of the brightest light sources in a scene. Specular maps can also be used to control how much environment maps will appear on a surface.

Specular map pages:

Transparency Maps

Transparency maps are used to cut out parts of a surface, usually for alpha blending. For example: fire, grass, hair, smoke, water, windows, etc.

Transparency map