Textures

Textures provide 2D imagery used by materials (albedo/base color, ORM/metallic-roughness-ao, normal, emissive, opacity, etc.). Files may embed images or reference external URIs.

How it works

• Image samplers define wrap (repeat/clamp/mirror) and filtering (nearest/linear/mipmap).
• Color space matters: base color/ORM usually sRGB, data maps (normal/roughness/metallic) linear.
• Packaging: single files per channel vs. packed channels (e.g., R=AO, G=Roughness, B=Metallic).

UV Mapping

UV mapping (texture coordinate mapping) attaches 2D coordinates to mesh vertices/corners.

• Multiple UV sets are common (e.g., UV0 for color, UV1 for lightmaps).
• Tangent basis generation often depends on UV0; mismatches cause shading seams.
• Some CAD formats approximate/lose UVs on export—validate after conversion.

Interoperability notes

• Maintain consistent color-space flags across DCC/engine to avoid washed or overbright results.
• Relative vs. absolute texture paths impact relocatability—prefer relative.
• When exporting to web (glTF), use GPU-friendly formats and power-of-two where possible.