Texture and Mapping Principles

Flashcards covering core vocabulary, PBR workflows, texture maps, shader configurations, and advanced texture baking techniques.

Texturing

The process of giving a 3D model (a collection of colorless polygons) physical substance and appearance, making it look like wood, metal, plastic, or stone.

Physically-Based Rendering (PBR)

A material creation philosophy based on the actual physical properties of light interaction with surfaces, ensuring materials look correct across all lighting conditions.

Microfacet Surface Model

A PBR model concept assuming all surfaces are covered in microscopic imperfections (microfacets), where their alignment determines whether a surface appears smooth or rough.

Energy Conservation

A fundamental physics law in PBR shaders stating an object cannot reflect more light energy than it receives, splitting light into specular (reflected) and diffuse (scattered) components.

Conductors (Metals)

Highly conductive materials that reflect almost all incoming light, have no diffuse color, and are defined appearance-wise by colored reflections.

Dielectrics (Non-Metals)

Insulating materials where light penetrates the surface, is absorbed and scattered, and re-emerges to produce perceived diffuse color.

Albedo (Base Color) Map

A PBR map containing pure diffuse color information devoid of lighting or shadows; it defines base material color for non-metals and reflection color for metals.

Roughness Map

A grayscale PBR map describing microfacet surface detail, where 0.0 represents a perfectly smooth mirror reflection and 1.0 represents a completely rough diffuse reflection.

Metallic Map

A black-and-white PBR map that tells the render engine whether a surface is a raw metal (white value) or a non-metal/dielectric (black value).

Normal Map

An RGB texture map where Red, Green, and Blue channels correspond to X, Y, and Z directions, faking surface bump details without adding real polygons.

Ambient Occlusion (AO) Map

A texture map containing soft contact shadows that naturally occur in crevices and corners where surfaces meet closely.

Texture Atlasing

An optimization technique of unwrapping multiple smaller 3D objects and arranging their UVs onto a single texture sheet to save memory and processing power.

Texel Density

The ratio of texture resolution to 3D surface area, kept consistent across objects in a scene to prevent visual detail mismatches.

Metallic/Roughness Workflow

The modern standard PBR workflow using Base Color, Metallic, and Roughness maps to define material physical properties.

Specular/Glossiness Workflow

A PBR workflow utilizing Diffuse maps, Specular maps (defining reflection color and intensity), and Glossiness maps (the inverse of Roughness).

Principled BSDF

Blender's multi-input 'uber-shader' node designed to create PBR materials by providing direct inputs for standard PBR texture maps.

BSDF

An acronym standing for Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Function, describing light interaction and scattering on surfaces.

Texture Baking

The process of projecting and recording surface details and normals from a high-poly model onto an image texture applied to a low-poly target model.

High-Poly Model

The detailed source sculpture model rich with high-density geometry, fine wrinkles, screws, and surface details used for baking.

Low-Poly Model

The performance-optimized target model built with clean, lower-density geometry matching the basic silhouette of the high-poly model.

UV Unwrapping

The process of flattening the 3D mesh surface of a low-poly model into a 2D planar map for texture application and baking.

Ray Casting

The underlying mechanism of texture baking where rays are cast from the low-poly surface to the high-poly surface to capture surface detail.

Cage

An optional, slightly enlarged duplicate version of the low-poly mesh acting as a precise starting boundary for ray casting during baking.

Extrusion (Baking Setting)

A bake setting that shoots rays outward from the low-poly model to bridge gaps and locate the high-poly surface.

Max Ray Distance

A bake setting that limits how far cast rays travel searching for the high-poly surface, preventing unwanted projection onto distant mesh areas.

Texture and Mapping Pipeline

The sequential workflow process connecting 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, maps creation, shader setup, texture baking, and low-poly target application.

Baking Detail Transfer Process

The step-by-step detail transfer flow from high-poly detail to low-poly target using ray cast, cage control, and normal map generation.