Fundamentals of Computer Graphics, 4th Edition

Chapter 11

Texture Mapping

When trying to replicate the look of the real world, one quickly realizes that hardly any surfaces are featureless. Wood grows with grain; skin grows with wrinkles; cloth shows its woven structure; paint shows the marks of the brush or roller that laid it down. Even smooth plastic is made with bumps molded into it, and smooth metal shows the marks of the machining process that made it. Materials that were once featureless quickly become covered with marks, dents, stains, scratches, fingerprints, and dirt.

In computer graphics we lump all these phenomena under the heading of “spatially varying surface properties”—attributes of surfaces that vary from place to place but don’t really change the shape of the surface in ...